In The Trenches Video Series

Securing a Manufacturing Facility | Access Control and Video Surveillance for Manufacturing

Today, we are discussing securing a manufacturing facility, specifically access control and video surveillance for manufacturing.

Our speakers today are:

1. > Matthew Nederlanden
2. > Benjamin Larue
3. > Micah Shearer
4. > James Campbell

Video Transcription

Micah Shearer:

It strikes me that the viewing issue with manufacturing facilities because of the size, because of the sort of multiple stakeholders, you've probably got multiple people on site who want access to the cameras. You've probably got multiple people offsite who want to access to the cameras. It's one of those things that it does really behoove you to think at the beginning, and start planning out not just what is the system going to do, but who is using it, how are they using it?

James Campbell:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of In The Trenches Round Table. This one we're going to be discussing manufacturing. There's a lot of interesting things about manufacturing. We've got security needs, we've got safety concerns when it comes to security, but also some non-traditional security requirements like being able to view assembly lines. And as usual, we have a great panel to discuss it with. First I have our CEO, Micah Shearer.

Micah Shearer:

Hello.

James Campbell:

Next I have our director of sales, Ben Larue.

Ben Larue:

Everyone.

James Campbell:

And last but not least, we have our CEO Matthew Nederlanden.

Matthew Nederlanden:

Hey everybody.

James Campbell:

All right, so one of the first things I would just go ask is what should manufacturing know about traditional security coverages for theft and all that kind of stuff?

Ben Larue:

Definitely if that's all right, I'll go ahead and just jump right in. I think some of the first questions I would like to ask and some considerations to have in mind would definitely be, are we retrofitting this facility? Is there existing equipment that's in place now? What does that existing equipment look like? Maybe what type is it? Those type of things. And if we are not retrofitting and this is maybe a new build or a pre-construction project, then really trying to get all of the key players, the people pivotal in making sure all the decisions are made in terms of camera locations or access control doors. Things like that happen well in advance of these things actually getting built. But typically that's where I like to start my conversations when we talk to manufacturing facilities.

Matthew Nederlanden:

Yeah, I mean I would want to balance between both the camera needs in order to get accurate surveillance of the plant and also the access control needs. I would really think that access control would be something that would be highly desired for the security needs. For a manufacturing plant, usually you've got a lot of bodies coming in and out, just the re-keying costs alone when you have turnover, which is also a little bit more frequent with manufacturing, the re-keying cost alone is going to easily pay... Not having that expense it's going to easily pay for the access control residual monthly bills. And so using something like our cloud-based access control with Openpath, you're going to be able to manage that through an app. You're going to be able to have people wave in front of a door with their cell phone, and be able to open the door without ever having to issue keys for somebody. I think that that would be something that I would really want to start with manufacturing.

James Campbell:

Let's start with access control. We usually start with cameras. I love the idea of starting with access control. Can somebody give me the best 60 second explanation of what access control is, and what does it bring to a manufacturer?

Micah Shearer:

I mean in terms of functionally, access control is simply can I allow certain individuals to unlock a door versus other individuals to unlock a door? It's the management and distribution of credentials essentially. And there are lots and lots of ways you do that in the archaic is you've got a key that's sort of the archaic analog, but typically with an access control system, you've got anything from key fobs to credentials on your phone. I love the wave to unlock that Openpath allows for the phones in my pocket. I have access to that door, I just wave at the reader and walk in. So that's sort of the crux of the functionality.

Ben Larue:

Definitely.

Matthew Nederlanden:

Even beyond that. A modern access control system despite something like a key allows me to grant access on certain conditions. So my employees can come in Monday through Friday from nine to five, but they can't come in on the weekend and you can never do that with a key.

Micah Shearer:

It allows you to be incredibly granular in how you control that access and flexible as well. And as Matt mentioned, the issues of re-keying. The nice thing about a modern cloud-based system is I can turn credentials on and I can turn credentials off without having to interact with a person or physically interact with the door. I don't know if folks remember sort of some old school days. So you had to literally plug something up to the reader and program it or to the controller in order to change credentials. And I mean if you're dealing with multiple locations and you're dealing with turnover and change, that is just an absolute nightmare and you don't have to do it anymore.

Ben Larue:

Absolutely.

Matthew Nederlanden:

So who's not dealing with turnover and change right now?

Ben Larue:

Absolutely.

James Campbell:

I heard shift, I heard time there. Does that mean you could potentially... Manufacturers have, sometimes they're operating 24/7, usually they have at least one or two different shifts. Can you grant access by shifts or anything like that or-

Ben Larue:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean you can get as granual as granting access per door per user. So if there's certain employees that shouldn't be in certain areas after certain times, maybe we don't want the manufacturing floor workers to be accessing the admin offices during the second or third shift. Well we could restrict their access into those parts of the building during those times if we want to. That's what access control gives you the ability to do, is electrifying the ability to manipulate and control access to any given door on a per user basis. So yeah, the use cases and applications for access control and how it can be used in a manufacturing facility is imperative to increasing their efficiencies of the production. And that's all manufacturing is. And I'm sure someone like Micah, our COO gets that right. Operational efficiencies are huge and that's the name of the game in manufacturing. So access control directly can affect that.

Matthew Nederlanden:

And not to mention even the life safety issues. Sometimes you have manufacturers that house tons of dangerous chemicals that could be used for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they house dangerous chemicals that just could hurt one of their own employees. And so being able to make sure that the right people have the right access to the right areas, I think is paramount to the manufacturing industry. Obviously we're primarily a surveillance company and we'll get to that, but I can't overstate how important proper levels of access control. Are the right people in the right areas at the right times?

Ben Larue:

Right. And before we go any further on access control and some of the use cases, I think it might be important just to, in a very bare bone sense breakdown, what access control really even is. And I think the easiest way to look at it is there's like three main components. There's the controller that's really the brains of the system and what interacts with, and actually physically unlocks and locks things. And that speaks to the two other components, the readers, that's a second component. That's what you're actually scanning your either key cards or Openpath's case with Bluetooth enabled wave to unlock features using your phone. So first controller, second readers. And the third component is that locking hardware on the physical door itself.

Matthew Nederlanden:

Yeah. And that could be something like an electrified strike or it could be a maglock, 400 pounds above the door. There's a bunch of different ways you could do this.

Ben Larue:

Exactly.

James Campbell:

So that brings up my question. We've talked about the benefits of access control. What is the installation or even the... What are the first questions you're asking? What do the people need to know about access control? What information will you need to get to you in order for that to start a quote and get the process rolling?

Micah Shearer:

And I think expectation setting is important for an access control system because it is labor intensive to install and there are additional complexities that you don't have with a camera system. With a camera system I've got a brain, the NVR and I've got a cable, and I've got the camera. With an access control system I've got the controller, the brain, I've got the reader, which is sort of like the sensor that is taking that information in. And I've got the door hardware. And the door hardware is incredibly varied. Doors are incredibly varied. So you have a lot that goes into understanding what door hardware you need, what you can use, what's going to serve your particular use case. And you also have an additional layer of life safety concerns more in a technical sense than what Matt referenced earlier as far as chemicals. But life safety in the sense of the fire marshal is going to come inspect that door, and make sure that you're not locking people inside the building in the case of emergency.

So I think having some expectations that it's a process, there's a lot of questions that will have to be asked and answered in planning the system out, understanding budget requirements a brand new access control system with hardware included. I mean you can range from $3,000 in the very low end all the way up to five or $6,000 depending on how complex you're getting or what kind of doors you're working with. So all that to say, just lots of variables to be prepared to sort of dig in, to be asked really good questions to have to gather information from other sources and walk through that process.

Ben Larue:

Yeah and Micah hit a couple notes there talking about life safety and getting a fire marshal to sign off on different things based on different codes in your jurisdiction. And there's a term that'll be often used that should be mentioned immediately when access control is brought up and that's AHJ, the authority that has jurisdiction in your given county or jurisdiction. That's going to be the person that we're going to have to coordinate with in terms of the life safety, making sure that the system is working and functioning properly during an emergency event.

Micah Shearer:

Yeah, there's sort of overarching codes NEC basically that everybody tends to follow but then individual AHJs can layer additional requirements over top of those. And we have to be aware of that and make sure that everybody's in compliance.

Ben Larue:

Exactly.

Matthew Nederlanden:

What you're saying is basically I have to obey my state rules but also my municipality and perhaps even my city?

Ben Larue:

Correct. And depending on the manufacturing you do there might be specific regulations or codes specific to the manufacturing you do. If there's maybe some chemicals, there's a whole host of different things that can come into play there. It's really important to have that communication and coordination with the client ourselves being the security advisors here and then AHJ coming together and making sure the solution works.

Micah Shearer:

And we take a little more time when we quarterback and access control project to identify a local technical group that really does have the resources and know what they're doing. And if we don't have that group, honestly, we'll be direct and honest with folks that we don't have a contact that we feel comfortable implementing this because it is complex. So you should always ask a lot of really good questions of whatever group you're contracting with.

Ben Larue:

Totally. And to Micah's original point setting expectations, these projects take a long time and for a reason because we want to make sure it's done right. And so should you, and if it's done right, then that's one thing you don't have to worry about that you can officially cross off the list.

Micah Shearer:

Yeah. If a camera goes down you lose footage and that really sucks and can ruin your day. If a door is set up wrong and somebody's locked in the middle of emergency, that's an entirely different level of catastrophe.

Ben Larue:

Exactly.

James Campbell:

If I'm understanding with access control we got life safety which involves, hey if there's a fire in this building, another kind of emergency, how do people get out of the building? How are systems interconnected? And we're talking about a lot of complexity here, this isn't an item that we do yourself, correct? We have to have professional-

Matthew Nederlanden:

No, you need to have a professional in there, especially if you are in manufacturing. So typically likely if you're at an office building, most access control is going to be what's called a fail safe setup. In other words, if you lose power, all the doors are going to unlock. If there's a fire, all the doors are going to unlock. It's called fail safe. And so if there's a failure within the building, it's going to be safe for everybody to exit. On the flip side though, every once in a while with manufacturing that's dealing with something that might be used for terrorism or might be used for really dangerous situations where somebody could come in and get it. So let's say, think of a nuclear power plant, they don't use that. They use a thing called fail secure, you lose power, everybody's locked down and that's because they don't want what's in there to get out.

And so there are a couple of things of, look we need to know what you're manufacturing, we need to know your jurisdiction rules on what to do in certain emergency levels. And so there is a lot more complexity than a camera system in terms of regulations, and bylaws and et cetera. But like I said right from the start though, we'll handle all of that. If we've got a good resource in that area, we'll handle all of that for you and figure it all out.

Micah Shearer:

And we will partner with you and work figuring all that out.

Ben Larue:

Yeah, absolutely.

Matthew Nederlanden:

But I would absolutely approach any sort of manufacturing first and foremost from making sure that we have a good access control system in place because what your manufacturing needs to be... It needs to be protected from a physical access ability.

Ben Larue:

Definitely. And James, going back to your original first question, what are some things to consider when we start looking at access control? Really the first question I would always look to ask is again going back to that idea, are we retrofitting or is this coming up net new? If we're retrofitting, do you have an existing access control in place or did the facility that you're taking over have some type of access control system in place? Because although the legacy style access control is now somewhat very outdated. The components, the locking hardware, the cable-

Micah Shearer:

Wiring.

Ben Larue:

To the readers, exactly. The controller location, a lot of those things will stay the same. Maybe we just have to swap out some of the components or maybe we could look into what components need refreshing, right? But that is a totally different animal and story compared to you have control over the physical doors that are going to be put in place there. Let's work with a door hardware company to source that locking hardware, make sure it's electrified from that company, those type of things, right. So that's kind of how I approach it and see what type of knowledge, what type of understanding do we have over your current facility in terms of door type, maybe existing equipment, so on and so forth.

James Campbell:

And what if it is a new one or you're just checking to see how many doors you have and coming up with a plan of who can access what, how early is that planning going on?

Ben Larue:

Yeah. Pretty-

Matthew Nederlanden:

You also need to know a little bit about your doors because you're always sort of retrofitting through the door.

Ben Larue:

Well I was going to say before that we need to know are the doors there or are they coming? Are you ordering the doors? If the doors are there and they don't have electrified hardware, then we need to start there. What type of door is it? How does it close? Does it have an automatic close arm? All these things are going to tell us what locking hardware we can use, which will further inform us what type of access and control we can have.

James Campbell:

Yeah. Anything else you think anybody should know about access control? It seems like it's a must have for a manufacturing plant. Of course manufacturers vary from producing thousands of things a day to people across the river who are making plates. That's technically manufacturing. So obviously each one's going to have a different need for that. If you got life safety involved, we probably need to have a discussion and talk about that. But anything else you guys think about access control before we move on to general surveillance or video surveillance?

Ben Larue:

My only last thing I would say is the earlier you can do this in the facility the better, right. So if we can influence and have the ability to implement access control, the moment you take over this new facility or the moment you're thinking about building this facility, the easier things are in the long run. And to Matt's point earlier, the costs, although they might seem great initially for access control, over the lifetime of the facility, of this asset, your costs will be significantly less than compared to re-keying every time you have turn turnover.

Matthew Nederlanden:

And every single time you have turnover you really need to re-key the door. That gets unbelievably expensive when you start hitting critical mass of more than 20 employees, 20 employees, whatever, maybe you don't have a lot of turnover, but as soon as you start having... And what manufacturer has less than 20 employees? So once you start hitting a critical mass of at least 20 the cost per year of re-keying the door when you have turnover versus a cost of just paying for the subscription to manage the cloud account, it vastly goes into your favor.

James Campbell:

So kind of one of the main things is the initial cost. Maybe you may get some sticker shock out of access control, but the total cost of ownership as time goes on, you'll start to see a lot of benefits from not having to re-key. Or the other benefits of the safety it's going to bring to your client and everything. Does that seem about right?

Ben Larue:

Definitely I would say.

Micah Shearer:

There's also time savings administratively of you're not tracking down people, and tracking down physical objects and assigning things to them necessarily. You can still use a key fob, but everybody has a smartphone. You can give people temporary credentials, you can centralize the management of that so you're not dealing with that, "Hey I can't get in the building." Call. So it's definitely a time savings administratively.

James Campbell:

Talk to me a little bit about the smartphone. Because most people who do access control or they know it as, "Oh it's that badge thing, I have to wear around my neck and I have to go and put it right there." How does that... That seems pretty new. What is that or how does that work?

Micah Shearer:

I mean basically you have the application on your phone, and I have credentials tied to that application and tied to this phone. So I literally just, if my phone's in my pocket or my bag, I walk up to the door, I wave my hand in front of the reader, it identifies my phone is there and I walk in. I recently had, I needed somebody to be able to come pick up something from the office, and I was able to send them a one day guest pass. Anytime that day you can go to the office. I sent it straight to their phone, they came in, they came out. It was super easy but I didn't have to deal with that, "Hey, I'm stuck in the building, can somebody come meet me?" Et cetera, time suck.

James Campbell:

And is that secure? Smartphones, I don't know.

Matthew Nederlanden:

It is so much more secure than the key fob. So the key fobs using technology called RFID for the vast majority of key fobs, and it's really easy to duplicate what it's sending out there so the reader has to read what it's transmitting. And so-

Micah Shearer:

Not to mention how easy it is to lose that fob or somebody lift that fob.

Matthew Nederlanden:

But it's just sending out the credentials and they have to be able to be read and you could just copy what it sends out. There's devices that thieves buy that where you wave a key card in front of it and spits out another key card that does the exact same thing. Key cards are not a good way of doing this. The more modern way with the app is so much more secure. I do want to point out that there is a key card available for Openpath and it is actually encrypted but the vast majority of the industry's key cards are not. So we do have a key card option if you want that, but it is encrypted.

James Campbell:

Well sounds like we've covered a lot of access control. How about we talk about video surveillance?

Ben Larue:

Oh is that what we're here to do?

James Campbell:

Yeah. All of them.

Ben Larue:

I forgot, I forgot.

Matthew Nederlanden:

I kind of hijacked the discussion to make sure that we covered that.

James Campbell:

That's very important. I think it seems like something that I agree with you as far as it seems like something that you want to start out earlier in the planning because you probably know how many doors you have early enough, right. So whereas video surveillance you've got a lot that may need to be built around to understand, okay this office is going to be somebody else's office. So access control does seem like a good starting in place. But now we kind of covered that you have video surveillance, what are we looking for that? We talked about retrofitting versus new. What are you looking at for that Ben?

Ben Larue:

Yeah, I definitely think there's a couple different approaches to take. We can always and will always look at using surveillance, and even access control as a security measure, right. As a physical security measure for all the things that you could think of security in the asset that you have at this facility. But much more than that, especially in manufacturing the line of site that access control and surveillance gives you specifically surveillance into your day-to-day operations into what is actually physically happening in this facility when it's happening. What's taking place? Who's being safe, who isn't? Those are some of the bigger considerations even outside of physical security, cameras are over the entrances of the doors, license plate cameras on the parking lot or the gates to enter the parking lot. Things like this totally make sense from a security standpoint, but cameras to cover the manufacturing floor, high volume areas, a lot of people coming and going. Any area where there's machinery interacting with humans, you're definitely going to want to have coverage there and large general coverage in those areas.

Anytime you have operated machinery like forklifts or floor jacks need to have coverage and cameras there. So surveillance is much more than just security in manufacturing and I think we should definitely look at surveillance through that lens.

James Campbell:

That's a great point and I think when we talk about surveillance, a lot of people think like at a gas station they know it's there because trying to prevent shoplifting. Manufacturing has so much going on. I think you hit some good ones there. What about some other concerns that they're going to have that video surveillance can help with?

Matthew Nederlanden:

I think, let me hammer something a little bit more, I say this in almost every one of these industry videos, but we have a thought process as a sort of person who goes places and gets observed by cameras and we think that the majority of the use case of cameras is to do things like stop theft or deal with vandalism or any sort of these crime based problems. And I think that we need to escape that here. The orbit of that is so strong that everybody tends to think about it that way. But the problem with a manufacturing plant is not going to be somebody coming in and stealing something, that's not going to put you out of business. But if you have a manufacturing defect in your machinery that produces six weeks of bad equipment that you cannot sell and then you find out about it six weeks later, that is potentially ending your operation. If you're sitting here and saying, "I've got to figure out how to offload 900 widgets that don't work because I've been manufacturing them for six weeks and none of them are effective."

And so things like being able to observe if a machinery is doing what it's supposed to be doing, being able to look into did it even have a breakage or a stoppage? Like a paper printer where it's just not going through it anymore or anything that prevents the operation of the business. Your biggest risk of anything to your business is preventing its own operation. And so that is I think one of the biggest needs of any sort of surveillance system like this is to be able to watch the delicate machinery that could be broken, and understanding and observing where it is or where it's having problems from a visual standpoint. And there might be multilayers where you observe this, you might have some sort of sensor system you get from somebody else or something like that. But being able to visually check on that, so the sensor has reported to me increased vibration on this device. Being able to visually look at it by a staff member that may not be at that location is invaluable.

Ben Larue:

I mean Matt, you hammer home on a point that is often overlooked by manufacturing facilities and production facilities having cameras on production lines or on equipment in the production process where humans can't be, right. Think of all the places on a production line where humans interact with the line in some sense or they might go and walk by and check. There are places where humans can't get that cameras can, and having the cameras with a high frame rate, the ability to see my new details like tags or stickers, or numbers or sequences of things. All that goes into play with that. You're exactly right.

Micah Shearer:

Well and on the oversight topic, I mean just a lot of manufacturing facilities are so large you can't be in all the places with any sort of frequency, so being able to have the option of just popping in across the entire facility is invaluable.

Ben Larue:

Oh absolutely. Furthermore, if you have an accident with a forklift potentially backing into something or worst case scenario, hurting or harming a human situation, these type of investigations halt all operations at plants for days, weeks potentially, until it's verified by all the parties involved. And then I mean of course you've got the security benefits as well. Shrinkage is unfortunately a issue at manufacturing and production facilities. I like telling the story as much as I can. We work with the manufacturing facility that does apple juice and Apple products, and they called me up during the middle of the pandemic when it was really, really crazy, when things really started to hit their peak needing more coverage of their storage rooms, their equipment storage rooms. And I just inquired why that was. That's kind of an odd place to really focus on putting a lot of cameras. And he informed me he could not justify the increased cost of toilet paper because of how much was being stolen. So shrinkage, whether it be on the actual product or raw material you're making or simple supplies that you're storing, it's a real thing. It's a real thing.

James Campbell:

So if I can sum up a little bit what I'm hearing is the benefits of video surveillance are, we've got obviously general coverage of your manufacturing floor in the general area as well. We've got the ability to see things we may not even be able to see with normal access, but also the general safety, the workman's comp issues, the making sure everyone's kind of where they should be and where they need to be. One of the things you guys mentioned was being able to view the manufacturing line with these cameras. What kind of equipment are you going to need? Is that going to be different? It's going to be probably pretty specific use, right?

Matthew Nederlanden:

It's going to depend on what machinery you have. So let's say you've got something that's very rapidly moving machinery, you're going to want a camera with a really high shutter speed, be able to observe if there's something that's going wrong with that process. So going back to the paper manufacturing, it typically comes down the line, goes basically in a circle, comes back out and it does that really quickly because paper's very cheap and we need to make a lot of it per second if we're going to be cost effective at making it. And so you need something with a really fast frame rate in order to see that. But in addition to that, we also know and I know certainly some things that may or may not be obvious visually, is it making a big clanging noise? Well that's a problem, but how do I know that?

Well, so you probably want a camera that can record audio and then you probably want to run an analytic that looks for big giant changes in decibel level. So is it soft, soft, soft, loud? So a problem or potential problem. And so in a scenario like that, on the flip side, we just did a deal and hopefully Ben you can speak to this one, where it had something to do with cranes. We had to have this whole Wi-Fi based solution because there's no way to... The cameras are literally moving around on these cranes, but totally different equipment requiring a totally different solution from the hardware standpoint.

Ben Larue:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's a perfect example of it really depends on what you're trying to capture and what you're trying to cover. And in that case that Matt just spoke to, they were manufacturing steel, right. And they have track cranes that move throughout their facility and they needed to have line of sight directly on how the crane is interacting with the steel, and essentially who and what is going to be in its way at any given point in time. Previous solutions that they were trying to use and implement were costing them upwards of $3,500 per camera, two cameras on a crane, you've got 36 facilities across the country, you can do some math there. It gets pretty expensive quickly with some simple Wi-Fi based IP cameras. We were able to solve the problem for exponentially less. But yeah, I think that's a great example. I'll also say-

Micah Shearer:

Should the average manufacturing facility expect that they can use Wi-Fi based cameras?

Ben Larue:

Absolutely not. It really depends on... No, it depends on a lot.

Micah Shearer:

I'm big on the expectation setting apparently.

Ben Larue:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Well there's so many variables. It's something that would have to be tested in a proof of concept. Absolutely. Before there's any commitments made on either side. WiFi-based cameras are not the answer for anything unless they have to be. So I'll blanketly say that.

Micah Shearer:

They're not the first choice.

Ben Larue:

No and-

Matthew Nederlanden:

I mean your first choice should always be to wire something. It doesn't matter if you're talking about servers or you're talking about cameras. If you want to make sure the data gets there.

Ben Larue:

Exactly.

Matthew Nederlanden:

From point A to point B, a wire is your most effective solution. Incidentally also, you got to figure out how to power the thing and usually that's over that same wire. So you're already usually running something. In this particular case you got a crane that's moving around but does have power attached to it already and therefore the wire with the wireless Wi-Fi solution with a wall plug. Obviously the camera still needs to be powered somehow, was actually a good solution. And that's not normally the case. Normally you want to wire things up and you want to have things stationary, but normally you're not dealing with a crane that's moving all around.

Ben Larue:

Exactly, exactly.

Matthew Nederlanden:

That I need to go stick a camera on.

Ben Larue:

Right, and another consideration in terms of manufacturing or production line cameras is really the lighting, a lot of the situations or areas where you might be wanting to see something or a piece of machinery, it could be in maybe a not well lit area. Or an area with variable lighting that maybe is changing often. And so these are all things again that we're going to have to consider, exposure, aperture settings, these type of things will be mission critical to ensuring that you're actually getting what you're wanting from...

James Campbell:

So I'm hearing a lot of eye in the sky discussion here. Where are people actually going to even view these cameras? Do they connect to a screen or how do they do that?

Ben Larue:

It's a great question.

Micah Shearer:

Lots of options. Where do you want to view the cameras?

Matthew Nederlanden:

So many options. Yep.

Ben Larue:

Exactly. The easiest way to boil it down though, for anyone who wants to know the options, you've got three main options. You can interact with the system directly from a video output on the recording device, the network video recorder itself. So all the camera-

Matthew Nederlanden:

Monitor and a mouse.

Ben Larue:

Exactly. You can do that in multiple ways. You can have video wall display set up, in some cases you could have just a single monitor. There's tons of options there but you've got direct connection. That's kind of the way I like to phrase that. Another option would be through the desktop or laptop software SCW view station. You could do that locally at the facility on the network or remotely depending on how you all want to interact with it that way.

Micah Shearer:

And there are different considerations and limitations on the desktop option if you're doing it locally, you have to think through the bandwidth that you are pulling into that computer and how that's going to affect the network that's set up there. If you're doing it remotely, you've got to really think about your upload speed and what those limitations and considerations are going to be. Apologies for cutting you off before option three.

Ben Larue:

No, no that's absolutely right. Option three quickly is just an application on your phone. Android, iPhone-

Matthew Nederlanden:

Smartphone app.

Ben Larue:

Exactly.

Micah Shearer:

You're still dealing with upload speed because a lot of times it's a sub stream. You're phone's this big so it's not pulling, it doesn't need to pull in all of the data so it brings you a lower resolution version just so you can figure out what's going on it. You don't hit the same challenges with upload speed though, it still depends. You still have to have a certain threshold.

Matthew Nederlanden:

Incidentally that's also what YouTube is doing right now. So if you're watching this on a desktop, you're seeing a higher quality video in most cases than if you're viewing on a smartphone. It's delivering you the video size that fits on your device and looking at, hey, how is my cell phone connection? Do I have a lot of reception? Things like that to give you the appropriate size video that your connection can handle from a data transmit perspective. Both from your upload and from the downloads and the camera's got to do that as well, although you could do it a little more manually where YouTube is only automatic.

Micah Shearer:

It strikes me that the viewing issue with manufacturing facilities because of the size, because of the sort of multiple stakeholders, you've probably got multiple people onsite who want access to the cameras. You've probably got multiple people offsite who want to access to the cameras. It's one of those things that it does really behoove you to think at the beginning and start planning out not just what is the system going to do but who is using it and how are they using it? We've definitely run into situations where we hit the end of the project and they're like, "Oh, so everybody wants to view the cameras in their office." And we're like, "Oh, so cameras move a lot of data, we have to talk through that." We ended up trying to almost retrofit our own project at the end with a solution and you can do it. There are lots of ways to skin a cat. There are lots of options but it's a more complex conversation. I think that people always anticipate that it's going to be.

James Campbell:

So it seems like it's a system in itself. That's what I'm kind of hearing from that there's things to consider with it. Does that sound pretty right or-

Micah Shearer:

That's the way of thinking about it, yeah.

Ben Larue:

Absolutely. Should a hundred percent be thought of from the beginning, from the initial conversations of the video system. You need to be thinking about where are cameras placed, what are they looking, what are they covering and then how am I interacting with it? How am I seeing that? Because there's plenty of applications in cases where Micah, we actually just dealt with a client where they needed specific viewing stations per isolated areas throughout the manufacturing facility where-

Matthew Nederlanden:

Well let's talk about one of those. Let's talk about one of those.

Ben Larue:

Yeah.

Matthew Nederlanden:

So a lot of big manufacturing have somebody who sits in a seat called something similar to a chief safety officer. Their job is to make sure that, "Hey, are you wearing that hard hat?" Or the appropriate gloves for your work, or work boots. Et cetera. And pre sort of any sort of system like a surveillance system that could do some of this work. You'd have one of those on each sort of location. Then they're not a chief, they're bringing on some sort of local safety officer that is observing to make sure that people are following the correct protocols. The nice thing about a video surveillance system is you can centralize that. So let's say you've got eight locations, you could have somebody working on this from a video perspective and viewing people coming and going, people on the work line and being able to report back to a direct manager rather than somebody having to do this on location.

And so you can have this sort of centralized person that is sending messages to local management about the safety issues rather than having to have a per location person that's tasked with checking this sort of thing. And that's just one of the many ways that you might use this sort of viewing station in a centralized manner in a way that is not the same as maybe different industry. There's no real need for that in an office setting for example. And so this would be a specific use case that we would probably need to understand from you to factor into the network design on, how are you going to be viewing this from a chief safety officer perspective? From a operational perspective? Who's watching when, how many view stations do we need to set up and how do we plan the network to make sure it's robust enough to handle that many people simultaneously.

James Campbell:

Let me even ask a simple question too because I'm hearing a lot of viewing it from remotely. We've definitely had cases where people are using this to just monitor their production line, making sure materials move across it. Am I going to get a big delay when I'm viewing it on my smartphone? Is it going to be... If I'm on something, if I'm viewing it remotely, is that something I can do? What kind of delay am I going to be looking at with that kind of stuff?

Micah Shearer:

Will get a delay. The extent of it I think is a function of how many stops that data has to make and what the upload speed is. It's not instantaneous and Ben or Matt, if you have more specific numbers about what that delay range is.

Matthew Nederlanden:

Yeah, it's going to depend on the network infrastructure that you have to go through in order to deliver this video to whoever's watching it. So how many switches are in the way, how many different networks? Et cetera. But in an ideal very simple environment, it's going to be sub one second, it's going to be very, very fast. You're going to see stuff that is pretty darn close to real time. Certainly as good or as better as anything else out there in the market. On the flip side, if you set up your network, in a really convoluted way, you get 12 switches it's got to go through and it's got to go jump to a VPN over at corporate and then come back down to you. That could take a really long time. So it is a little bit of a-

Micah Shearer:

By a really long time we mean several seconds.

Matthew Nederlanden:

Yeah, yeah. Like two seconds, three seconds.

Ben Larue:

Two, three.

Matthew Nederlanden:

A long time from a real time perspective, but not a long time-

Micah Shearer:

From a monitoring or production line perspective.

Ben Larue:

Right.

James Campbell:

Where would be the least amount of delay. If that's something that is-

Micah Shearer:

Cameras to NVR, straight to a monitor.

Ben Larue:

Direct from machine. Direct from machine.

Matthew Nederlanden:

Yeah you're going to have way less than a sub one second if you're looking at the monitor that's connected to it.

Micah Shearer:

Matt or Ben, you had started to talk about a specific use case a few minutes ago and I kind of want to hear what you're going to say. They needed several stations?

Ben Larue:

They needed the ability to... They were using cameras to monitor their production lines in different parts of the production line. And in each area where they were monitoring the production line, they have a foreman that looks at a monitor with the camera views verifying and making sure everything is still functioning properly. And that is what ensures the production line is working seamlessly from end to end. If one foreman notices something off on one of their cameras from looking at that monitor, they can push a button that alerts a light, the other foreman see that light, they start slowing the machine down and now things can start working together all from the use of a video standpoint. And that's why I think it's important to consider what your needs are. If your needs are to monitor a production line, you don't want a delay, we're going to recommend you set up a local direct to machine viewing set up. But if you're trying to monitor just generally general coverage and how things are going overall at the facility, then yeah maybe you can use the view station software.

Matthew Nederlanden:

The chief safety officer idea, it doesn't really matter if it's three seconds delay for that.

Ben Larue:

Exactly.

James Campbell:

And one of the other topics I did want to bring up too is retrofitting, some places are going to already have preexisting cameras and I know a lot of them are analog cameras. Are those just rip and replace? Can they use some of those? What options do they have for that?

Micah Shearer:

Yeah. I mean you can't reuse the cable for an IP camera. I mean technically you can. Lots of things you can do. It's a very terrible idea. You don't want to do it. The reliability of that is not an option.

James Campbell:

Let me ask too, sorry to interrupt, but how would I know if I'm a manufacturing plant owner and I'm looking to upgrade my video surveillance system or even add onto it, how would I know if I even have analog or is there an easy way of knowing or-

Micah Shearer:

I mean one of the easy option is looking at the cabling and maybe you can throw some pictures up here in a second. Because BNC cabling looks very, very different than IP cabling. Your CAT5 cable is going to look like what you plug into your computer for the network B and C, it's big, it's fat, it's round.

Matthew Nederlanden:

It looks like something you would plug your TV into if you're-

Ben Larue:

Cable TV.

Matthew Nederlanden:

1980.

Micah Shearer:

Apps. Yep.

Ben Larue:

I'll also say you can tell by looking at a monitor of the camera views, if it starts to look like you're underwater a little bit on the actual view, on the screen, that's a sure tell sign that that's a analog cable in it's construction.

Micah Shearer:

Which kind of dials us back to the, can you retrofit it? Can you? Yes. Should you? Probably not. If you're investing in that system, I mean we do have a device called a corporal and we're not the only ones who carry something similar. They can basically encode that analog signal and transition it to our NVR and network video recorder. So you can still view that analog camera alongside of your IP cameras. There are some situations where that makes sense but generally it's not worth it. So you're not going to reuse the cable, generally you're not going to reuse the camera. Yeah.

Ben Larue:

Technology is super outdated. If things break and the cameras go down, you're not going to be able to repair it... Likely not going to be able to replace it.

Micah Shearer:

Yeah. Repairing them is rough. There's a lot more to troubleshoot in terms of the power as well.

James Campbell:

So what I'm hearing is yes it's possible but maybe only if you absolutely have to for not just maybe budget reasons but potentially, hey, how am I actually even going to access that cable while we're open? Maybe they're a manufacturer plant that's open 24 hours a day. That might be difficult for them to stop production. So hey, we can still get these analog cameras working with you and eventually, hopefully the plan is to get them to IP and get all the benefits of IP with that too.

Matthew Nederlanden:

It's also easier than you think to take an analog cable that is run through the wall and pull a little bit out, tape an IP camera to it.

Micah Shearer:

I hate when people say that. It's not that easy.

Ben Larue:

Our install team would be screaming at you, Matt.

Micah Shearer:

Our install team hates when you say that.

Ben Larue:

They'd be like, "What? Why'd you say that?"

Micah Shearer:

I don't know if we're supposed to get this combative in this environment. But yes, sometimes you can do that. It all depends on how that cable was installed to begin with. If it is properly secured, if it's secured anywhere close to code, which is every, I think it's four feet or so, at least it is for CAT5, there's no way you're pulling that you need to go and clip every zip tie or every J hook. So that's not... I think some people go, "Oh I've got coax already, half the job's done and we end up having to have this really difficult conversation with them. That's basically the technology's outdated and so is your cable, and it's not really work you can repurpose.

Ben Larue:

True. Yeah. Well and that brings up the bigger point too of installation from a professional security company like ourselves versus no offense to Jim Bob, but Jim Bob Security Company. There's vast differences in how we are going to approach to the project and the standards that we uphold ourselves to. And so we're going to talk about a system whether that be retrofitting or installing a net new one as though those standards were met. Because that's how we... For us to touch it, that's what we're going to assume is the case. Which is why I would argue also to Matt and Micah's point that technology is extremely outdated. Resolution was exponentially lower. You needed many more cameras in an analog system to cover the same area one IP camera could cover. So you think it might save you to reuse these cameras, but I can guarantee you in the long run over the next year and a half of you owning the system, it will cost you more in repair service calls downtime. Not to mention any things that you miss.

Micah Shearer:

And I would just say from the install perspective, there's a little bit more coordination often around access to space. You're thinking about, when can I go in and out of certain spaces. Frequently you've got really high ceilings, you're often needing a lift which adds some expense. You also frequently have high ceilings with different things going on in the ceilings. So we end up having to really consider does the camera... The camera can't hang directly on the ceiling probably it probably needs to be dropped down. How far does it need to be dropped down? And asking a lot of those questions on size of the facility. Will also add some complexity and some expense because if you're running 600 feet of cable versus 150 feet of cable, that's a very different labor calculation. And then you compound it with, I have to walk from one side of the building to the other side of the building, and back, for tools and supplies and it's a more complex planning process and project management process. And often requires coordination with someone onsite who can help traffic control.

When can I go where? When can I not go where? So that you don't end up paying for labor time where people are just sitting around and not able to do work because they can't get to where they need to do the work.

Matthew Nederlanden:

I would float up another sort of consideration with something that has to do with manufacturing with the chemicals that you might have to use. And if you're dealing with some sort of chemical that could potentially be an issue. We probably need to know about that so that we could recommend the right product. So we might recommend, so for example, a camera with a glass dome and then you might bring up a sort of chemical issue that that's absolutely the wrong solution. It might fog up all the time or it might corrode or something like that. And so we've got different solutions that we can recommend depending on what sort of chemical solutions or aerosols or whatever that you have to deal with. The last thing that I kind of find funny and interesting to bring up is, I was over at the safety conference five years ago and dealing with a lot of chief safety officers and they talked about wanting to not record so there wasn't any proof of violations. And I want to point out how crazy illegal that sort of admission is, especially at a safety conference.

It's expected now that you have recordings everywhere. That sort of viewpoint of well you can't prove that I knew it, is never going to fly in today's day and age. You need to have the proof. Ignorance is not a... Ignorance is an admission of guilt at this point.

Ben Larue:

No, absolutely not. And on the flip side of that though too, I have seen and worked with several clients who actually get discounts on their monthly premium from their insurance companies for having certain amount of days of high quality recorded footage on hand. So there's always just some things to consider.

James Campbell:

Sounds like we covered a lot when it comes to manufacturing. If you have any questions and you want to learn more, definitely reach out, QR code up here, go to getscw.com. We'll be happy to get the ball rolling on access control, video surveillance, answer any questions that you might have. I want to thank the awesome panel for joining me again on this one and I look forward to the next episode. Bye-bye.

Micah Shearer:

Bye guys.

Ben Larue:

Thanks everyone.