4 Reasons Why Some Digital Signage Projects Fail in Manufacturing Settings

You have a nice pilot going with a few displays. It has been a few months and the excitement is over. Your signage network is not growing because there is no interest from employees or from management. Why? You did the research. You know the benefits of using digital signage to communicate to workers. So why is your signage network stagnant? Here are some reasons why some digital signage networks fail to impress in the manufacturing setting.

Your content is old and irrelevant

The fun part is over. The product has arrived, it has been installed, the connections have been tested, bugs have been ironed out and now you have some basic placeholder content on display. Cool, right? What happens next and how soon you implement it is critical for your digital signage initiative to succeed. You need to provide fresh up-to-date and useful content for those who need it most and it needs to look beautiful so that people will want to look at it. You may say that the dry-erase boards and bulletin boards were only updated a few times a week and were plain looking also. True, and no one cared about those either.

Your content is not automated

Lack of automated content is a big reason why your content is old. Just as opening a dry-erase marker is a barrier to use for the previous medium, opening software, whatever it may be to manually enter the data to have it show on an LCD screen instead is not much better. The best thing that you can do for yourself and the digital signage project is to automate the content as much as possible. Any digital signage system that is worth your time will pull from multiple sources of data. SQL, Oracle, web pages, image drop folders, Excel, even Notepad. If you are relying on having time to manually update your content, then you are setting yourself up for failure. Don’t recreate the failed bulletin board or dry-erase board workflow; automate it.

Displays are in the wrong location

Example of displays in an excellent location!

If people cannot see the screens, then even the greatest, most compelling content is wasted. Put the screens right where your target audience is. If they are working on the line on the shop floor, then put a display on each line. Here are a few ideas:

• The shop floor including GEMBA meeting areas displaying KPIs and other metrics to foster productivity improvements and worker safety improvements.
• Lobby and Common areas to highlight company information, company news and company social networking. These displays serve well to have the weather, secular news and other informational items to keep employees engaged.
• Sales and Management Offices to display sales KPIs, product fulfillment figures, quarterly projections, and other information that can be updated in real-time so that leadership can make the decisions they need to make sure that they can be as agile as they need to to stay ahead of the competition.

Displays are the wrong size

It is tempting to save money by getting small screens. Don’t skimp. A screen that is too small to be seen is useless and the larger the environment, the easier it is for the screens to be ‘swallowed’ by the space around them. Commonly, manufacturing floors are large spaces. Typically you will need between a 46” – 55” LCD minimum. For a small break room or lobby you can get away with 42” LCDs. If you think that 75” or 85” LCD will serve you better, consider getting four 42” or 46” LCDs and setting them up in a 2×2 matrix. This could help you save some cash and at the same time expand your options for content deployment.

Conclusion

If you are able to correct these issues, then you will be on the path to creating a useful, impressive and sustainable digital signage network that will set you apart from your competition. Your workers will be happy, safer, and more productive and in the end, by following these suggestions, you will be responsible for all of it.

To learn more about Noventri digital signage, visit our website or contact us at sales@noventri.com to learn more about our solution for manufacturers as well as our content store that includes content templates for manufacturers to remove all of the guesswork from having and maintaining the most effective digital signage network possible.