23 Nov
The secret is to hide in plain sight.
Heist movies often take advantage of this trope:
Impersonate an employee, especially a new one.
The heist outfit researches an employee from the establishment they are about to rob.
An employee who is relatively unknown by their colleagues.
They then hold them captive, make a quick disguise based on their physical features, use their ID at the gates, and take their place on the day of the heist.
Doors always open for the ones who seem innocent—unassuming.
Even the Harry Potter books used this line of logic, as the famed trio impersonated 3 relatively unknown officials to infiltrate the Ministry of Magic.
What’s the deal?
The established employees do not know the new employee well enough to spot atypical behaviour from them.
Because new people are less familiar.
In the manufacturing world, there are equivalents to these unfamiliars.
The alarming thing is that they are just one vulnerability for factory managers.
Each datapoint, each checkpoint, and each person in the outer ring that surrounds the valuable products and materials could have vulnerabilities.
VAMS, being a visitor management platform, is one major part of that factory management system.
And it is specifically designed to help manufacturers root out these vulnerabilities.
Here are 10 scenarios it gets on top of, so that factory management keeps pace in the 2020s.
1. You Make the Unknown Variables Known
The Winning VAMS Feature: Contractor passes and walk-in visitor passes
You might have seen those guys with dusty work boots and construction hard hats.
Or perhaps you’ve seen the ones who come with complex equipment, wires twined around their shoulders, to test the production line machinery in the factory.
There are many varieties of temporary contractors who come on site to do a job.
And many of them aren’t recognizable to the surrounding permanent employees.
Because they’re new people.
And they’re in the vicinity for only 7-14 days.
And they don’t stand out like this guy.
The VAMS “Contractor Module” helps admin:
- Crosscheck their IDs on first-time entry.
- Enter the contractor’s details into the system.
- Print “contractor passes” for the stipulated time.
- Generate a scannable QR code on the pass for every entry.
- Deactivate these passes after the date.
There’s a second aspect:
What about general walk-in visitors who come in?
The process is the same, but the “visitor passes” expire as soon as the visit is over.
That is, as soon as the visitor checks out, the pass expires.
If the visitor wants to return the next day, they will have to be verified again and have another visitor pass issued.
This way, you can manage the relatively unknown faces.
And you let them occupy only the areas where they’re authorized to be.
2. You Get to Visualize 24×7 Data on a Screen
The Winning VAMS Feature: A real-time dashboard to aid in visualization and decision-making
The VAMS dashboard is an underrated visualization tool.
It dispenses enough data to help factory administrators make informed decisions on the floor.
Just like one of those savvy operators reading the falling Matrix code, where the data helps you gather what’s going on in the Matrix—or, in this case, the factory world.
You see the manufacturing world in numbers, logs, and IDs.
It’s a real-time, data-driven, context-aware optimization.
What this means is that it helps you monitor the factory’s spaces in terms of visitor data, so that you know:
- Who’s in?
- Who’s out?
- An accurate headcount of everyone on premises
- The “people flow” at the bottlenecks and sensitive building zones.
Facility managers and plant operators can take data insights for their decision-making regarding what happens on the factory floor and in the adjacent areas.
For example, they can use VAMS to know when attendance is low, and configure the day’s task allocations to maximize productivity.
And when chaos rears its ugly head?
3. Customize Safe Words to Make Chaos Behave
The Winning VAMS Feature: Emergency alerts for everyone on premises
Chaos happens. Accidents happen.
It’s the way of the world.
No matter how well-designed and well-scheduled manufacturing plants are.
They are large, dynamic, and complex systems where anything can go wrong at any time.
Bad weather, gas leakage, fires, explosions, exposed biohazards, a Tyrannosaurus Rex—the list goes on.
VAMS is invaluable to factory managers in any such event.
For example, imagine a fire breaks out in the factory’s main warehouse.
Admin can use VAMS to send alerts to everyone on the premises logged into the visitor management system, directly on their devices.
VAMS also allows the admin to customize the message according to the situation.
For example, the admin can convey the exact problem on the VAMS platform and have it sent to every person:
“Fire in the south warehouse. Evacuate and assemble in the driveway. Avoid the southern side of the premises at all costs.”
It is digitalized safety and it can be seamlessly connected to systems like the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and the factory’s operational technology.
In other words, if incorporated at the park, it would have made Spielberg’s Jurassic Park a significantly more peaceful movie.
“Tyrannosaurus rex spotted trespassing onto the main road near the goat paddock.”
4. Stream Safety Protocols in 2160p
The Winning VAMS Feature: Safety videos for the first-time visitors
It’s not like everyone who comes in knows how to act inside.
Manufacturing plants can be mysterious and dangerous to an outsider.
Inside, there would be sci-fi-adjacent equipment barely imagined in the real world.
VAMS lets the people coming in have a clear-cut idea of how to behave safely around all this equipment and how to exit in case of an emergency.
For example, where the exit points are on the factory floor.
Or how to put on Hazmat suits.
Admin can use VAMS to send these safety protocol videos to first-time visitors.
They will be sent just after their entry QR codes are authorized at the entrance.
5. Help Them Sign NDAs in 5 Seconds
The Winner VAMS Feature: NDA acknowledgment before entry
Factory secrets are paramount.
Remember Willy Wonka rewarding the kid who didn’t sell secrets to his chocolate-manufacturing rival?
That’s a problem in the real world too.
- Factories hold physical property that are extremely valuable.
Semiconductors, microprocessors, electronic components, nanotechnology, pharmaceuticals—think about the possibilities of theft of these valuable products. - Further, the patented processes used to make these products are also valuable as intellectual property. Outsiders should ideally be required to never disclose these products and details outside doors.
For that purpose, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are the factory manager’s heroes.
They present the situation in black and white terms.
If you could get your visitors to sign an NDA that ensured all of this, it would solve the problem.
VAMS simplifies the deed.
Directly on their personal devices, VAMS sends visitors a digital NDA, and can also ensure that they keep smartphones, cameras, and other image-making devices in a locker or at the desk.
It’s an elegant way to keep the confidential assets confidential.
6. Know the Bad Guys Beforehand
The Winning VAMS Feature: Restricted watchlist of the known troublemakers
Every industry has its fair share of antisocial elements.
Thieves, vandals, protestors, graffiti artists, fired employees, former criminals, local mafia—if there is something of value inside the factory, some people outside will want to devalue it or obtain it.
In case an individual has previously flouted the factory’s rules and broken decorum, VAMS stores their names and IDs in a watchlist to restrict future entry.
Good news: your security guards won’t even have to frisk those headcases anymore.
They can just refuse them at the front desk itself.
7. All Goods & Materials Coming in are Screened
The Winning VAMS Feature: Delivery and Asset Management
Look around you.
The factory has an overwhelming program of human activity.
Appointments and deliveries crisscross the offices, floor plans, and circulation spaces.
Goods keep coming in at loading bays and backdoors.
Finished products may go to a packaging section or a specialized storage zone.
VAMS targets some of the needs here with Asset Management and Parcel Management.
Asset Management: Incoming visitors may have laptops, cameras, and other expensive equipment on their person. These need to be collected for the factory’s aforementioned confidentiality requirements and kept in lockers. On other occasions, employees and other visitors may be bringing in equipment into the offices and rooms, and they have to be recorded so that security knows what came in and went out, and so that the object can be returned to the owner at the exit.
Parcel Management: Some other parties may have to deliver lunches, tools, and project equipment parcels to the inside. These deliveries need to be managed and recorded. For that VAMS has devised a system that enables hosts to authorize and accept their parcels even while away.
And its presence can be a deterrent to incompetent deliverymen.
VAMS is the platform that carries this complex sequence of logistical movement.
8. Hosts are Pacified by Predictive Schedules
The Winning VAMS Feature: Host notifications that keep everyone up-to-speed
Uncertainty drives factory managers crazy.
Managing appointments, delivery shipments, and assets without a visitor management system can be an awfully suspenseful situation.
If you don’t know exactly when a guest has checked in at the front desk, you don’t know when to prepare the snacks and coffee, and you don’t know when to mentally prepare yourself for the appointment.
VAMS makes sure all hosts get prompt notifications.
When a visitor shows their QR code at the front desk’s entry kiosk, and it is accepted, the host gets a ping directly on their phone.
There, the category of the type of visit: whether a pre-registered or parcel/delivery, will be displayed.
Knowledge is power, as they say.
It’s also peace of mind.
9. The Devil Wants the Details, so Safeguard the Details
The Winning VAMS Feature: Data privacy and encryption across the VAMS database
In a world where our intellectual power is in data, data theft is the devil.
When you collect visitor data at the doors, all those details—contact info, biodata, log-in times—can be misused by the wrong person.
So you have to create a situation where this cannot happen.
This topic encompasses corporate espionage, hate crimes, and even sexual harrassment, when unsavoury individuals glean contact information of women in the workplace.
Further, given the convergence of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) in the last decade, data has become more seamless, but also more open to hackers, ransomware, phishers, malware, etc.
For that purpose, VAMS has ensured a double-factor authentication system along with the close compliance with data privacy laws and legislations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
There is simply no way through the digital doors.
10. The Special Ones get the Special Treatment
The Winning VAMS Feature: Pre-appointment check-in
Last but not least, there are always special ones to cater to.
High-profile partners, certificate and standards officials, logistics inspectors, factory equipment testers, and CEOs.
These individuals will make at least one visit to the factory every month.
It is always the prerogative of the factory manager to make sure their experience is optimal.
No one wants the inspector responsible for certifying a consignment of glass bottles to fall into a grumpy mood just because he had to wait 25 minutes in a stuffy reception room.
Moods affect decisions.
You don’t want them waving their finger in disapproval even before their official work is done.
An unfavourable decision on the factory’s future is the last thing you want.
To sweeten the situation from the start, VAMS has the “Pre-appointment check-in” setup.
Factory managers and other coordinators can use this to fast-track VIPs and other high-profile visitors into the building.
They can use VAMS to pre-register these VIPs before they arrive, which will send a QR code directly to the VIP’s device.
When the VIP walks to the main doors later, showing the QR code to the concerned security checkpoint will notify the host to whisk them inside faster than you can say “privilege.”
Sometimes, even factory managers have to know when to make exceptions!
So What Makes the Factory of the Future?
A factory of the future is one that has optimized:
- Costs
- Time
- Security
- Labour
- Inventory
- People Flow
- People Satisfaction
Using artificial intelligence, access control, predictive maintenance, operational technology, facility management systems, and Internet 4.0, along with enterprise-targeted visitor management software like VAMS allows manufacturing plants the leverage to filter out operational inefficiencies, and boost each of these factors.
You need to use the options that offer unique remedies to improve outcomes.
Each new technology you onboard will make a difference for the future.
Especially one that treats the people that matter as they should be.
A visitor management system serves civilization in a place that often forgets its human roots for cold metrics.
You can help humanize that world inside.
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