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Brewing a surveillance solution

A well-known century-old Japanese brewery is revered locally for its sake, shochu, plum wine, beer and flavourings. It operates five large-scale breweries in Japan and continues to expand in scale and scope. To ensure product safety, the brewery is committed to improving process stringency. In this context, it noted the growing insufficiency of its current surveillance system and recognised the need to replace total surveillance solutions in order to improve cost control and maximise product safety.

Not all the surveillance solutions such as hardware, software and the video management system within the breweries needed to be replaced. Therefore, the brewery hoped to build an open system with cross-brand compatibility to reduce overhead, without sacrificing operational efficiency. The brewery opted for fisheye cameras to reduce the number of cameras needed for the system. However, most fisheye cameras are image-based and lack real-time surveillance capability. More importantly, because the brewery operated several locations throughout Japan, an online management platform was needed to consolidate the whole package.

The VIVOTEK solution

VIVOTEK came up with a comprehensive solution comprising 260 devices including 200 IB9368-HT cameras, 50 FE9391-EHV cameras, and 10 PoE network devices managed using the VAST 2 video management system. The platform supports off-brand cameras compatible with ONVIF specifications and features useful built-in features, such as real-time warnings and video playback, to facilitate ad-hoc and post-event searches, providing users with unrestricted control and greatly enhancing management efficiency.

The IB9368-HT bullet network cameras and FE9391-EHV 360° fisheye network cameras were installed within the breweries to monitor production line processes. The IB9368-HT camera features a remote focus lens that can be adjusted for different segments of the production line. It also supports dynamic scaling for more detailed process monitoring, greatly enhancing food safety. By comparison, the FE9391-EHV camera can single-handedly cover areas that would otherwise require two or three non-fisheye cameras. Therefore, they were installed in the brewery’s new production line to monitor the bottle-filling, packing and palletising processes.

Both camera models feature VIVOTEK’s WDR Pro and Smart Stream III technologies, providing high-quality footage of the production lines, even in the contrasted environment. Furthermore, H.265 compression technology support reduces bandwidth use by up to 90%, freeing up storage space to ensure footage integrity.

The result

VIVOTEK tailored its high-end network camera, PoE, and image management products into an IP surveillance solution that met the individual needs of the brewery. In this case, VIVOTEK partnered with ForceMedia and ACTUNI to ensure seamless integration and upgrades. The Japanese brewery was extremely satisfied with the security upgrade and plans to add even more VIVOTEK products in the near future to maximise food safety and process integrity.

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