Coupland's Bakeries is one of the largest independently owned bakery chains in New Zealand. The company operates 26 retail bakeries throughout the South Island, Hamilton, Rotorua, Tauranga and most recently Napier, and two large-scale manufacturing facilities in Christchurch and Hamilton. The challenge Coupland's
Coupland's Bakeries is one of the largest independently owned bakery chains in New Zealand. The company operates 26 retail bakeries throughout the South Island, Hamilton, Rotorua, Tauranga and most recently Napier, and two large-scale manufacturing facilities in Christchurch and Hamilton.
The challenge
Coupland's Bakeries had an old Windows-based surveillance system that occasionally broke down and was very slow at responding. Aiming for great customer service and high quality products, Coupland's Bakeries require surveillance to oversee cashier's desks, truck pickups and deliveries, as well as the entire retail stores and factories. Thefts, errors, and vandalism have to be managed.
The solution
In 2011, Coupland's Bakeries sought to replace their old surveillance system with a reliable, cost-effective, and easy-to-manage IP surveillance solution. After a thorough evaluation of several PC and NAS systems, Lindsay Sutcliffe, CIO of Couplands' Bakeries, decided on Synology surveillance solution, and deployed over 30 units of DiskStations to manage a total of 265 IP cameras in their 26 retail bakeries and two large-scale production facilities. The system integrator who deployed the solution is Active Security Systems. They have a very good understanding of the Synology Surveillance Station software and extensive experience with IP security camera deployment from small to large sites. All the DiskStations are centrally managed by the company's head office in Christchurch. Many sites also set up a screen to display a live-view of the images streamed from shop cameras locally.
The result
Coupland's Bakeries owns numerous retail bakeries and production facilities across New Zealand, each with a different size and security requirement. "Synology provides a wide selection of DiskStations, from which we can choose different models that fit the needs of large or small sites. Also, Synology DiskStations are designed to scale flexibility to store video streams with high image quality," noted Sutcliffe.
Prior to Synology surveillance solution, Coupland's Bakeries already deployed several IP cameras in various sites. According to Sutcliffe, switching to Synology surveillance solution does not leave their existing cameras inoperative; instead, all of them are compatible with Synology DiskStations. Furthermore, Synology's camera support continues to add the latest camera models to its compatibility list. "Synology even managed to support the latest fisheye technologies, giving us the cost-effective solution of using only one VIVOTEK fisheye camera to cover all angles of a location," explained Sutcliffe. "The dewarping feature works really well."
Reliability and ease of use
Another advantage to Synology surveillance solution is its reliability. All the DiskStation models run Synology Surveillance Station, and share the same features. "Surveillance Station is intuitive and easy to use, making it quick for employees to utilize the system." noted Sutcliffe. Because Surveillance Station is entirely web-based, it is easier for the company to maintain the system than having to installing client software on each computer.
Feature-rich yet cost-effective
Surveillance Station offers rich features to help Coupland's Bakeries capture moments of vandalism, theft, errors, and accidents during live feeds and recorded events. A variety of analytic tools, such as motion detection, offer substantial capabilities and send alerts to when suspicious incidents occur. The company was especially impressed by DS cam. "DS cam allows us to react to incidents while away from the office, providing mobile device access to all sites including live viewing and recorded footage." said Sutcliffe.
Coupland's Bakeries pointed out that DiskStations are worth every money invested in, with the new features provided in software upgrades at no additional charge. After two years of implementing Synology surveillance solution, the company has started to take advantage of other features coming along with DiskStations, such as network backup and storage.