Challenge: Optimizing production workflows to reduce bottlenecks and streamline efficiency
Silver Bay Seafoods needed clear visibility into all areas to reduce bottlenecks and streamline operational efficiency. They have hundreds of cameras deployed across their locations to monitor the flow of 2-million pounds a day of seafood they are processing. Because facility supervisors and plant managers aren’t able to be everywhere at once, they build in the usage of video footage into their production automations to understand if their employees are following protocols and that their production flows are operating correctly.
Before Spot AI, they have disparate legacy on-premise systems like Lorex, which were difficult to use, and made monitoring and searching for footage to identify bottlenecks difficult and time consuming.
"We had a number of different camera systems across our locations before Spot AI. It was a nightmare. Now, moving our facilities to Spot AI, my job is getting easier. We can have one log-in and one source of truth to search for and find video footage.”
- Martin Wagner, Director of Information Technology, Silver Bay Seafoods
Solution: Reduced operations bottlenecks by using Video Walls
Wild seafood is a seasonal business in Alaska, meaning Silver Bay Seafoods only has a small window to process their product.This makes it mission critical that their operations have no issues.
With Spot AI, they’ve been able to stop these issues by having clear visibility into their operations and getting alerted when an issue happens on the production line.
Silver Bay Seafoods was able to avoid tank overflows and food spoilage with better monitoring on a cloud-based system that can easily be accessed by over a dozen plant managers, using high density video walls to have ultimate visibility into operations in real time, using cases to save footage to review where bottlenecks occurred so they can leverage for training and improve in the future.
"We have cameras throughout every step of the production flow. Spot’s AI Camera System allows us to make sure that workers are properly handling product and that they are working in a safe manner.”
- Martin Wagner, Director of Information Technology, Silver Bay Seafoods
Challenge: Maintaining BRC food safety compliance and NDAA compliance
Like any food manufacturer, Silver Bay Seafoods needs to maintain the highest standards for food safety. But, they struggled to solve for this with the limited storage and playback capabilities of their legacy systems, and needed a better way to meet compliance certifications.
Silver Bay Seafoods is also a government contractor, meaning they needs to be NDAA compliant to adhere to rules laid out in The John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, which created a “prohibition on certain telecommunications and video surveillance services or equipment” that comes from specified Chinese manufacturers.
“We work with the government and other health organizations. We needed a reliable camera system that was NDAA compliant and that wouldn’t become a major upfront expense. Spot’s free NDAA compliant cameras really helped us achieve our goals with a new camera system.”
- Martin Wagner, Director of Information Technology, Silver Bay Seafoods
Solution: Implement an AI Camera System to achieve BRC food safety compliance and NDAA compliance
Spot AI’s AI Camera System has provided Silver Bay Seafoods a seamless way to maintain BRC food safety compliance. BRC Global Standard for Food Safety is the gold standard for food manufacturers. It ensures that leadership is invested in food safety and helps maintain the highest standards are met for food handling, process control, product control, and personnel.
With Spot AI, Silver Bay Seafoods has been able to achieve improved storage and fast retrieval of relevant footage so they could achieve compliance certification required by wholesalers and review footage if there was ever any issue with their canned food.
With Spot AI’s easy-to-use AI Camera System, Silver Bay has been able to save significant money by leveraging Spot AI free cameras, as they need to replace about 30 cameras per year.
In addition, have been able to onboard multiple members of the organization from IT to HR, Operations, and other leadership members. They’ve been able to mitigate against worker’s compensation claims, improve transparency into processes across the organization, and save time finding and reviewing video footage.
Spot AI and Silver Bay Seafoods worked together on an implementation plan that allowed for less upfront costs for hardware and helped them achieve their ultimate need to be NDAA compliant. This means that they were able to continue working as a government contractor and providing needed materials to health organizations.
Challenge: Illegal dumping on facility grounds that cost thousands of dollars to clean up
Silver Bay Seafoods has some processing facilities away from mainland Alaska. At these facilities, they had a problem with illegal dumping. Abandoned vehicles and other waste would show up on their grounds outside of business hours or during the offseason. These vehicles were not drivable and cost thousands of dollars to load onto a ferry and move to the mainland to be disposed of properly, wasting time and money for the company.
This not only was a costly issue for the company, but it wasted their team’s time. For each abandoned vehicle they needed to backtrack and look through video footage to see when the vehicle was dumped, who dumped it, and start putting a solution in motion to remove the vehicle.
Solution: Reduced illegal dumping and saved thousands of dollars with vehicle alerts and people alerts
Before Spot AI, illegal dumping was a costly security issue, with trespassers leaving abandoned vehicles in their yard multiple times per year, costing the company up to $5K each time to dispose of the vehicle.
With Spot AI, they've been able to leverage vehicle alerts and catch perpetrators at the time of the incident, and significantly reduce these unnecessary costs. This allows their team to become proactive, save time and money, and easily set up AI alerts that allow them to know when people and vehicles are present, where they are located, and stop them before they illegal abandon a vehicle or other waste.
