| Ellwood Group, Inc. is deploying over 250 IQeye HD megapixel cameras and growing |
Headquartered in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, Ellwood Group, Inc. (EGI) produces engineered, heavy metal sections for capital specialty equipment manufacturers in the United States and around the world. The company’s nine operating business units—encompassing multiple plants in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Texas and Canada—are dedicated to solving customers’ needs for specially engineered forging steels, iron castings, forgings, and other alloy parts.
The challenge
When making a single speciality steel product that can cost tens of thousands of dollars, it is essential to have the capability to monitor the manufacturing processes and if a problem is experienced downstream, to then have the ability to go back and find the root cause. If a manufacturer can implement process monitoring technology that quickly, accurately solves manufacturing problems, the system pays for itself in short order.
The solution
Ellwood Group, Inc. is deploying over 250 IQeye HD megapixel cameras and growing, in order to monitor and improve manufacturing processes, in addition to meeting 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, 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.”
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 utilising H.264 compression.
“Our growth is typically through acquisition,” said Spadafore, “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.”
The highlights
- Ellwood Group has installed over 250 HD megapixel cameras to improve manufacturing processes and overall security at 10 of its locations.
- Rather quickly EGI saw the value of closely monitoring manufacturing with IQeye HD megapixel cameras, and now they use cameras at every facility that comes on line.
- In what is a growing trend, EGI uses its megapixel technology 75% for process control and only 25% for physical security.
- As a result of using megapixel technology for process control, EGI has seen measurable improvements in efficiency and productivity, resulting in substantial savings.
- As one EGI location or division discovers the benefits of this kind of manufacturing process monitoring—both live and post-event—inevitably they, too, request cameras.
- To successfully manage the expansion of the use of IQinVision technology, Spadafore’s division has developed a de facto standard, scope of work, and set of specifications for how to successfully deploy the IQeye cameras in each new location. “To maintain consistency and best practices, we elected to be the overall project manager for camera deployment.”