The security of your warehouse facility should be in your initial plans, not only to ensure the security of the products that you house, store and manufacture, but also to protect your company from safety and employment related issues. A proper security plan should include consideration for building intrusion, access control, monitored alarms and proper video surveillance. Each of these systems is integral to the success and longevity of your business as well as the control of the data therein.
Intrusion Protection
Intrusion protection is a multi-faceted area, which includes both perimeter surveillance as well as intrusion sensors and alerts. Alarm system sensors should be placed at each entry point to alert police via entry at times that are not approved. This can be accomplished through door and window sensors combined with PIR motion sensors for interior areas. Though this should go without saying, these items are critical for facilities that are not manned 24/7. While capable of alerting monitoring center of unexpected entry, intrusion alarms will not provide evidence of what occurred or who perpetrated the crimes. All intrusion systems should be supplemented with video security cameras to provide video coverage of all appropriate areas.
When planning the video coverage of warehouse and manufacturing facilities, Platinum CCTV always takes all facility access into account to deliver the best possible coverage and optimum evidence. Proper assessment begins with entry to the grounds. The majority of entry will begin with vehicle entry to the parking lot. The vast majority of intrusions will occur for gain of material goods, given the large acreage of most facilities, it is unlikely that a perpetrator would enter on foot, this means that a vehicle will be used to approach the facility prior to gaining entry. Capture of the vehicle data becomes crucial in prosecution when an intrusion occurs. Most facilities have a relative few number of entry lanes, optimum video coverage of these lanes will include LPR (License Plate Recognition) cameras designed to grab license plates off of vehicles even when travelling up to 100 miles per hour in pitch black conditions. These cameras, if placed at guard shacks or monuments in the entry ways ensure that you know detailed information about every vehicle that enters your facility.
Once you have plate information from the vehicles entering, it is important to get evidence of what happens while the persons or vehicle is on premise. For this purpose, building mounted surveillance cameras are employed. Each of these wide angle cameras help to provide video coverage of the entry doors, windows, bay doors and parking areas and provide you with the full story of what happened once someone arrived at the facility. The video provided by these cameras will allow you to further identify flaws in your building's physical security as well. Review of attempted or actual break-ins will enlighten you on hiding locations, weak entry doors and even tests against your building's security, but only if a recorder is employed that permits adequate playback.
Video security should not end on the outside of your facility though. If building intrusion occurs, video inside the facility is also crucial in determining what breach occurred and what they accessed while inside. Interior cameras should be positioned inside of each entry door, and wide coverage in key areas of the warehouse at minimum to cover high value goods. These cameras are also critical for other purposes, and luckily the same positioning will prove useful for these objectives.
Access Control
Access control systems should be employed to regulate entry to the facility. These systems have grown more user-friendly over the years, progressing from the original keyed doors to newer biometric or wireless access systems with key cards or key fobs. These systems not only permit access to your employees and permitted suppliers, but also give you a method of tracking their access to restricted areas, or the facility in general even. This allows you to track employee movement through the facility when things get moved, lost or broken. This becomes key data to be used in a comprehensive security plan.
Access control systems can be extremely complex, using biometric scanners, however the most popular systems are the key fob and key card systems. These systems can be programmed and reprogrammed easily, and have been around for many years allowing the technology to mature. Biometric style scanners (and even time clocks) while designed to ensure that the unique identity of employees are used to obtain entry, they are currently fraught with many failure points, often causing them to be bypassed as the system is being repaired. Our advice is to stick with what you know works well and reliably.
Facility Safety
Security cameras can provide many more benefits than simple intrusion protection. These devices are perhaps the most honest account of what happened at your facility, providing no bias towards the reporting of events. This means that they become a valuable asset also when accidents occur around your warehouse. Coverage around the inside of the facility should be planned to include coverage of all areas where people are working near machines, forklifts are moving, trucks are backing up and chemicals are employed. These silent witnesses will help you cut through the noise that is generated by different biased opinions when an accident occurs so that you can take appropriate steps as an employer to rectify the situation.
In order to employ cameras in this method, it is important first to have an appropriate plan for the layout of coverage throughout the facility, ensuring no key areas are missed. This is why at Platinum CCTV we always conduct a thorough evaluation of your facility in person, allowing us to ask us all about your operation, to help us determine the key areas and recommend the appropriate camera models for coverage. When paying attention to safety with security cameras, it is important to ensure that you have the maximum frame rate. Many companies drop the frame rate of security cameras to save on storage space, but this will not help when it comes to a slip and fall or other accident that occurs in your facility, leaving you with choppy video with gaps so you may not see what really happened. Also, selection of a camera that has sufficient resolution to provide you with good distinguishing characteristics can mean the difference between finding the cause of an accident or not. Finally, when laying out a camera system, use of an easy to playback NVR solution becomes vital as this decides how easy it is to find the video that you need. An easy to use system, like our AVM System provides you with the ability to scan through entire days of video in a matter of minutes. With a system this user-friendly, you will not dread reviewing video, which means you will end up using it more often.
Even if safety was not the main purpose behind the cameras, following these guidelines will assist you in finding additional use for your camera system, helping it return the investment in many ways.
Plan your warehouse or manufacturing facility security the right way, using a company that is trained and proven to provide effective coverage. Call Platinum CCTV for all of your security camera and safety camera system needs, and allow us to help you protect you employees and facility properly. We approach your security in a manner that will help protect you from all types of concerns based on our years of experience with clients that have similar facilities. We never employ a one-size-fits-all approach, but rather custom tailor the equipment to help suit your needs. Call for an on-site evaluation today (866) 537-5438 Learn more about our warehouse security camera systems
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