Context of Digital Signage in industry settings

In the industrial environment, information is essential for workstations in organization work desks, production lines and in supply chains. For those who are operating these workstations, the following information needs to be communicated:

• Goals
• Production and quality indicators
• Safety rules
• Deadlines
• Methods and plans for manufacturing
• Maintenance programs
• Training opportunities

In traditional methods, this information is conveyed to operators by way of print posters and it originates mostly from the production departments computer system that is designed for managing and monitoring the work processes. PCs, tablets and other classic office equipment have become so common throughout organizations but are rarely assigned to industrial workstations. The reason being that their functionality is too rich, the equipment is too costly and possibly unsuitable. As a solution to this problem, LED Craft Inc brings forward their range of LED signs to provide a modern, economical and powerful solution to distribute information in such industrial environments.

Digital signage can assemble and broadcast a variety of information on networked screens that are installed in public and private settings. Screens that are seen by a particular group of people such as employees or customers can display information relating to that particular target group. The information can then be enriched with other real time information such as weather, news, traffic reports and so on. The benefits of digital signage is repeatedly emphasized everywhere, the most important being that it makes communication so much easier. The theory of images being more powerful than text has been proven again and again and LED signs does just that: presenting all types of information through images, thereby increasing devotion and memorization.

Digital signage does its best in an industrial setting when placed at a suitable location where each screen is visible by many operators. With information loops, real time management data that is collected from the production department can be broadcasted. With the help of automatically generated graphics and images, this raw data can be easily understood by those looking at it. In addition to production information, other safety information, preventive maintenance and emergency information loops can be created to be displayed on these LED screens. When the information displayed is done in an attractive manner, the likelihood of it being remembered is higher. When the information is memorized, risks are less, performance is better and the level of integration of employees is higher.

The components of a standard digital signage system

• Screens

LED screens, video walls, projectors or tablets are managed individually with the help of a Player; which is a local, networked intelligence.

• Player

Players consist of ‘hardware’, which is usually a circuit board either inserted into the LED screen or acts as an external cabinet. A Player is capable of managing one or more screens. The display loops and the screen’s operating parameters are managed independently by each player.

• Server

The server is installed privately either on a cloud or on the company’s on site IT structure. The content management software is then hosted on the server.

• IP network

This can be either a LAN (Wi-Fi) or WAN (3G, 4G, etc). The IP network allows the content management system (CMS) to connect and communicate with the Players.

• Multimedia content

Examples of this include photos, videos, data feed, HTML pages and so on.

Those managing the content (CMS) of the digital signage network can import and save media content onto the server and can define the sequence in which the content has to be displayed. A continuous broadcasting loop can also be defined (for example – to display specific content on a specific screen for a specific duration).

The CMS and IP network is connected through the Player. Media content is ‘pushed’ to the Player along with the schedules for broadcasting. When the Player is in off-line mode, the LED screen will show the content as per instructions previously received from the CMS. There are other ways in which Players can manage the screens – assign sleep and wake timings, alarm relays, etc.