January 28, 2021
Industrial organizations, factories, and cities are turning to Internet of Things (IoT) technology, like intelligent cameras, sensors, and data, to transform their operations. Recent research from the McKinsey Global Institute indicates that IoT could improve factory efficiency by up to 25%, while also improving worker safety. And that’s just the start.
At Samsara, we believe transformative technology, like IoT, has the power to simplify and support the complex operations powering our global economy. And we also believe that the key to it all is a focus on you: our customers.
Since our founding, Samsara’s culture has been one of rapid innovation driven by customer feedback. It’s this focus on listening that has driven the 200+ product updates we released last year alone. And it’s through these conversations that we began to hear a similar theme: our customers valued the enhanced visibility Samsara provided for their fleets and were looking for that same Samsara experience and visibility when managing their warehouses, facilities, and terminals.
That’s why we’re excited to announce Site Visibility—Samsara’s newest cloud-connected solution that brings the power of AI video out of the cab and into on-site facilities. Site Visibility is an advanced video management solution that brings powerful search features, intelligent detection tools, and proactive alerts to IP security cameras. By solving for our customers' unique challenges, we designed Site Visibility to allow customers to:
Remotely monitor all of your locations from anywhere, with cloud-based technology
Gain actionable insights with AI-enhanced camera streams and intelligent search tools
Seamlessly integrate existing, third-party camera infrastructure
Connect operations and data across your entire business: production facilities, remote assets and equipment, fleets, end-customer services, and all work sites
Site Visibility combines hardware, cloud, and mobile technology to connect operations on a single, convenient platform that serves the business needs of our customers.
Samsara’s dashboard makes it easy to navigate and gain insights into your entire operations in a single view.
Often, business leaders only have access to video footage from their worksite when physically on-site and logged into the corporate network. This can significantly limit the reach and responsiveness of your team when managing multiple buildings, especially if worksites are located in different regions.
Site Visibility offers flexible, intelligent visibility in order to proactively monitor all of your locations. Best of all, you can view these on-site camera streams from anywhere in the world via Samsara’s cloud-based dashboard or the Sites mobile application.
Delta Constructors is a full service oil and gas provider with locations across Alaska, North Dakota, Texas, and Alberta. Aaron Schilling, Director of IT, manages camera systems across all 12 of their sites. With Samsara’s cloud dashboard, Schilling can now monitor camera connectivity and on-site activities at each site, without needing to physically travel across the country. Increased visibility and custom alerts means he can also respond to device outages or security threats at even their most remote locations—and share that footage with authorized users via the cloud. “With Site Visibility, I can be everywhere at one time, especially when working remotely,” said Schilling.
View your live camera streams from the easy-to-navigate Sites mobile application.
If there is an incident at a worksite, it’s imperative to move quickly and take action. In those cases, scouring hours of video playback can be cumbersome and inefficient. Smarter insights mean you can take action faster, and Samsara’s AI technology is designed to do just that:
People detection: The system uses AI to intelligently detect if people (or motion) are present in a stream.
Activity search: An AI-powered search tool enables comprehensive search parameters by date, time, people detected, and more across all camera streams, to find the exact footage in question.
Stream search: Focus your search for motion or people within a specific area of a camera stream to help answer questions such as, “Who was the last person to rack this pallet?” or “How was this piece of equipment damaged?”
O’Neal Steel is one of the largest family owned, full-line metal distributors in the United States and an early adopter of Site Visibility. “It saves so much time and frustration,” said Sateesh Donti, CTO.
If there is an incident on-site, Donti knows that his operation managers and supervisors can easily leverage people detection and other AI search features to find the footage in question within minutes. Once located, they can then share a link to the footage with their safety team, enabling them to investigate and act. “It’s very easy for authorized users to uncover the story quickly, no matter where they are, and share with relevant stakeholders,” said Donti. “We chose Samsara because we needed a reliable, secure, and modern security system.”
Stream Search allows you to focus your search for motion or people within a specific area of a camera, reducing the time spent reviewing and searching for footage to minutes.
In addition to powering search, you can use these same AI features to set up custom alerts to proactively notify you when an incident occurs. For instance, you can set alerts that detect people or motion after hours, if people are detected in unsafe locations, inactivity on a machine line, or if a device goes offline, allowing you to respond to on-site activities immediately.
Logistics Warehouse offers transportation, product manipulation, and warehousing services across six states. Ronnie Robertson, President, was looking to improve operational efficiency, and proactive alerts helped them make smarter decisions for their business.
“We kept finding new things to look at with the cameras, new insights and things to improve,” said Robertson. “The system just makes sense. We’re already seeing major improvements in efficiency.”
By setting up inactivity alerts—custom alerts for areas, like production lines, that have inactivity—Robertson was able to decrease unplanned pauses and produce 45% more a day, increasing profit margins by 8%.
Investing in a security camera system can be a considerable undertaking that requires significant effort and costly installation of new hardware. Samsara’s Site Visibility video management solution (VMS) is designed to integrate with third-party solutions, bringing in streams from your existing cameras to our cloud dashboard. There’s no need to rip and replace the infrastructure you’ve already invested in, which means your existing cameras can benefit from Site Visibility’s advanced AI features, without another big upfront investment.
As a team of one, Schilling didn’t have the time or resources for a complex installation. Site Visibility allowed him to intuitively onboard their pre-existing camera deployments, quickly. “I love the ease-of-use with these products. Samsara makes it really easy to just plug and play,” said Schilling. “You get up and running, fast.”
This was also a huge benefit for Keith Henderson, Director of IT at Leonard’s Express, a transportation provider based out of New York. “We already had two camera vendors we were using,” said Henderson. “But, when I heard how quickly we could get up and running, we decided to move forward with a free trial. In just 15 minutes, the Site Gateway was set up and pulling in our existing camera streams—it was really a showstopper.”
If you need to upgrade an existing location or outfit a brand new location with hardware, we also have hardware solutions to help you. Our full stack solution includes a cloud network video recorder (NVR) and high resolution 5MP IP cameras. This gives you the option to employ a hybrid camera system using camera streams from existing locations and deploying Samsara IP Site Cameras at newer locations. “It was important for us to protect our existing camera investment,” said Donti. “We already had cameras in our warehouses, but we wanted more data and flexibility in our camera system.”
Samsara’s cloud technology enables you to view footage from all of your cameras through a single dashboard, on both desktop and mobile.
Samsara offers a unique 360° view of your end-to-end operations. With Site Visibility, we give you insights into your industrial operations, consolidating footage from various security vendors across all of your locations. And, because it’s Samsara, your camera system will be accessible alongside our world class fleet management solution.
“With Samsara, we can manage infrastructure, fleet, and sites all from a single pane of glass. One application can view the whole company across three regions,” said Schilling.
By monitoring not only your worksite, but also your fleet, your business is able to benefit from unparalleled operational visibility. An end-to-end view of your entire operation means streamlining your workflow so that you can deliver exceptional customer service, prevent disruptive incidents, and ensure quality and safety throughout. “There are very few solutions that allow you to instantly monitor trucks and warehouses at the same time, while also being anywhere you want to be,” said Ronnie Robertson, President of Logistics Warehouse.
With Samsara, full visibility and total management of customer fleets and sites are available in a single, convenient dashboard. The connected operations platform provides AI Safety Programs, real-time visibility across your business, workflows, and reporting to increase productivity, and an ecosystem. All of this means you can run all your operations from one integrated platform. Site Visibility is the latest addition to the Samsara platform and features our advanced AI technology and straightforward user experience.
Food Express, a bulk transportation business based in California, relies on Samsara’s Vehicle Gateways, Asset Gateways, Dash Cameras, and Site Visibility. “Food Express needed even more visibility into our operations,” said Jim Terry, Director of IT. “The Site Cameras complement our fleet tracking so we can better monitor our assets. We get complete visibility this way and can view everything from a single, Samsara dashboard.”
Want to learn more about how Site Visibility can advance your security camera systems and reduce operational complexities? Join us for a live webinar on Feb. 17th to see how we're bringing the power of AI video out of the cab and into on-site facilities.
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