Toyota Motors choose ACTi video surveillance solution for production line remote monitoringPublished on 30 July 2007  At Toyota's production line in Taiwan, there are 5 production lines that assemble the popular Corolla sedan, Camry sedan and Wish MPV automobile vehicles for sales in the Taiwan market.
Toyota's aim was to clearly identify the status of each production line, so Toyota chose to deploy video surveillance on each line in order to monitor the production volume, time taken for each production stage and confirm the procedure at each manufacturing stage. Live video streaming at each line will allow the production team to gather crucial data at each production stage, and hence provide a basis for Toyota to improve manufacturing efficiency. Two solutions were considered, one being a typical analogue camera to DVR architecture, while the other being a video server to IP network architecture. The deployment also included PLC (Programmable Logic control) SCADA (Supervisory control and data acquisition), as commonly found in most world class production lines. GAE systems, the System integrator partner for this project evaluated both solutions, and proposed the ACTi IP surveillance solution to Toyota without any hesitation. The most compelling reason of using ACTi's SED-2120 video server and free bundled Streaming Activator software was because the video quality, features and overall cost of the project met Toyota's expectations. On each production line, an analogue box camera connected to an ACTi SED-2120 video server was placed. The video server was hooked to a network hub on each production line, and each hub was linked to each other until reaching a server that linked to the control centre. ACTi's SED-2120 video server provides good video quality with low latency. D1 images running at 30 frames per second allowed the production analysts to view clear and smooth video from a remote location greater than 500 meters away. In fact, each of the 5 production lines is located at least 500 meters away from the control centre. GAE compared the cost for deployment for 500 meters of coaxial cables for each of the 5 production lines, and the cost of 5 network hubs plus just one Ethernet cable connecting back to the control centre. The result was that the Coaxial + DVR deployment would be 2.5 times the cost of an IP surveillance deployment. Furthermore, ACTi's free bundled streaming Activator software was very easy to setup and operate for the Toyota staff, not to mention the software just had to be installed onto existing PC equipment instead of requiring new equipment. ACTi's SED-2120 video server has proved that it is capable of industrial level performance, being able to provide seamless remote video streaming at high quality D1 format, good enough even for world class manufacturers such as Toyota Motors. | 
