Specialty Steel Manufacturer Deploys IQinVision Cameras
Ellwood Group (EGI), producer of engineered, heavy metal sections for capital specialty equipment manufacturers, has deployed more than 250 IQeye HD megapixel cameras to monitor and improve manufacturing processes and meet security needs.
“We have moved from a test environment over five years ago to now having megapixel cameras deployed at about 20 different locations in our various plants,” said Eugene Spadafore, senior network administrator of EGI. “We started out asking, ‘How can we improve quality for process X?’ Rather quickly we saw the value of closely monitoring manufacturing with the IQeye cameras and now it’s a standard in our environment, we use the cameras at every facility.”
In addition to the 10 manufacturing facilities that now use IQeye HD megapixel cameras for process monitoring, additional cameras at those locations are also used for monitoring overall security as well. Spadafore estimated that they use the cameras 75 percent for process monitoring and 25 percent for general security.
EGI stores video at each location anywhere from three days to three months, depending on the manufacturing process being recorded. The majority of the cameras are 2.1 MP IQeye Sentinel and 700-series cameras, the newest utilizing H.264 compression.
“Our growth is typically through acquisition,” Spadafore continued, “Once a new company is acquired, the next question is, ‘When can we get cameras installed?’ We are quite satisfied with how the IQeye cameras have performed in meeting our sophisticated needs. As a result of using megapixel technology for process control, we have seen improvements in efficiency and productivity and that translates into real money.”