News

3M adds digital signage for employee communications

June 17, 2007

BRACKNELL, UK — 3M announced that its digital signage solutions have replaced conventional notice boards at four of its manufacturing and distribution facilities. Plants at Aycliffe in County Durham, Gorseinon in South Wales and Clitheroe in Lancashire, as well as the 3M European Distribution Centre in Bedford, have adopted 3M Digital Signage technology to enhance the delivery of employee communications direct to the shop floor.

Each site now has installed 42-inch plasma displays, which are linked and controlled by 3M Digital Signage software to enable the display of multimedia files, including data feeds from 3M's internal systems. The software allows each site manager to schedule information to be displayed at pre-defined times of the day, and for different information to be displayed on different screens.

At Aycliffe, four screens have been installed so far, including two located in manufacturing areas to communicate production and quality data, as well as site bulletins and safety briefings. A screen in the staff canteen presents social content and corporate employee communications material drawn from a central feed at the company's UK headquarters in Bracknell, Berkshire. The fourth unit is stationed in the reception area and communicates corporate messages and videos to visitors, including background information about achievements at the Aycliffe site.

At Bedford, there are three screens located at strategic positions in each of the main warehouse areas. The 3M Digital Signage software distributes three channels of content enabling each screen to be defined and updated individually. The information shown is a mixture of space availability, outstanding picks for the day, safety information and claims data, extracted automatically from the Bedford warehouse management system. Showing timed data, including basic information such as when forklift trucks are re-charging, allows the workforce to focus their efforts on other tasks.

"Many enterprises regard employee communications as critical to achieving continuous business culture success," said Simon Birkenhead, sales and marketing manager for 3M's Digital Signage and Optical Systems Division. "Digital signage delivers a powerful solution, supporting many types of media and content and enabling instantaneous communication."