Case study: SHAREPOINT

Need a Digital Display Solution to Enable Real-Time, Effective Employee Communication?

Case Study at a Glance

CLIENT

A Fortune 100 CPG Manufacturer

THE PROBLEM

Our client had been relying on physical bulletin boards with paper announcements as the primary method of communicating daily tasks at morning planning meetings on the plant floor. As the day went on and changes were made, updates needed to be printed, carried to the boards and replacing the original content. Because reading the content required walking long distances at the right times – just after the announcements had been posted - plant workers were often unaware of critical updates and conditions affecting the production of their lines. Visibility was limited and important announcements were going unnoticed.

THE VERTEX SOLUTION

Vertex created SmartBulletin - a digital display that delivers targeted and dynamic visual messages on demand. SmartBulletin ensures that employees are notified of important news and instructions.

THE RESULTS

Plant users gained hundreds of hours in productivity, resulting in significant soft savings every year.

We Got IT.

SmartBulletin is a Digital Display that Helps Boost Manufacturing Productivity and Increases Plant Profitability

Problem and Background

Daily planning meetings on our client’s plant floor had been centered around large metal display boards holding printouts of production schedules. Workers would assemble for instructions, position themselves as best they could to read the messages, get their assignments and report to their workstations. The problem was that production schedules changed frequently, and for workers to stay abreast of updates, they needed to regularly walk across the plant floor (often the length of a football field) to learn how these updates would impact their tasks.

It was hard for workers to know with certainty whether the information they had was trustworthy. Our client needed a way to deliver accurate information in a timely manner and to allow workers to respond and ask questions.

Vertex Solution

Building a community of engaged employees is simplified when solid communication tools are in place.

To help our client, a global manufacturer, communicate with workers in its plants, Vertex built SmartBulletin, a collaborative digital display that pushes the right content to the right audience. Built with SharePoint, .NET, SQL Server and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the system is updated remotely from a computer or device, delivering targeted messages with text and graphics in real time to highly visible monitors mounted in the plant where people can see and interact with them.

SmartBulletin is easy for management to update and effortless for workers to use. Critical information can be shared instantly, keeping personnel on track with updates and any schedule changes. Content can be scheduled in advance with automatic expiration dates and various monitors can display different messages, a helpful feature for areas of the work floor that may require specialized content.

Delivering trusted, visual content helps connect workers to their goals. Screens can change as needed, rotating through different content messages including:

Performance dashboards
Schedules
Health and safety updates
Employee recognition

Key Benefits and Results

By providing an easy-to-view digital communications, the company dramatically improved efficiency and productivity upon deployment. Our client experienced significant ongoing cost savings, eliminating 36,500 touches in the first year, and gaining plant users more than 1,000 hours in productivity per year.

Real-time display of specified plant or department board in full-view mode
Effortless viewing of different boards, customized for detail
Complete control of screen display content
Touchscreens allow users to swipe and move tiles
Users can zoom in on items or functional areas of special interest
Customized display of tiles in different sizes
Reduced paper printing by 90%
Increased meeting efficiency
Related content can easily be cross referenced and viewed.
Numerous SmartBulletin monitors ensure all team members have consistent information

About Us

Vertex is a business and technology consulting ﬁrm that helps customers transform their business processes with leading edge technology. Learn more at www.vertexcs.com.