Leaders in Europe
A total of more than one billion CDs and DVDs are being produced annually in the village of Dassow, Germany, population 4,000, making ODS Optical Disc Service GmbH one of the leading manufacturers of optical storage media in Europe. ODS is also a leader when it comes to creating jobs in an economically underdeveloped region: with 1,300 employees, ODS is the largest employer in the district of north-west Mecklenburg. With a second factory in France and distribution centres in Great Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Hungary and Greece, the company is represented in the most important markets in Europe.
Disks for magazines
The three factories in Dassow can press and package up to three million optical storage mediums (1.8m CDs and 1.25m DVDs) a day and have them delivered with their own fleet of 33 vehicles. In addition to copying disks, the pressing plant also offers content management, packaging solutions and - under the ‘Gigatain' brand - so-called R-media, i.e. rewritable CDs and DVDs.
Close to half of the company's revenues (47%) are now earned through orders from newspaper and magazine publishing companies, which, more and more frequently, use CDs and DVDs as inserts in their print media. ODS is the market leader in Europe in this field and serves as many as 81 print mediums in Great Britain alone. 24 % of the business is done with ‘traditional customers' from the music and film industry. The rest is divided between companies, media brokers and agencies (20%) as well as Internet service providers (9%).
"Highest camera density"
ODS holds yet another record: a total of 264 MOBOTIX cameras, more than anywhere else in Germany, are used in the three factories in Dassow to make sure that the licensing rights to music, films and other contents are reliably protected.
"We place a great deal of importance on reliability and transparency," answered Andreas Lingk, Head of IT Management at ODS. "That means, not only can our customer retrieve information on the current status of production at any time via the Internet and even find out where any particular truck might be with its delivery goods, the customer can also be absolutely sure that production is in good hands and that not a single CD goes astray."
Not an easy job when you consider that the factories run 4 shifts seven days a week. That's why ODS sticks to a hard-and-fast rule: Anywhere where disks are produced, printed, packaged or stored, there are cameras watching over all the work processes. "And that means virtually everywhere, except in the bathrooms, the lunch/break rooms and in the administration area," Andreas Lingk confirms.
Key argument
This high security standard is easy to understand when you consider that some films are copied onto DVDs before they are even shown at the movie theaters here in Germany. "The licensing authorities are very demanding when it comes to security issues, and rightly so. If only one DVD became public before the film was launched at the movies, it could have devastating effects on our customers," explained the IT manager. "Besides, the extremely high security standards we are able to provide with the MOBOTIX cameras is another important argument in negotiations with new customers."
Fascinating potential
Why use MOBOTIX cameras? "We originally used analogue technology, which stored black & white images in mediocre quality on an 80-GB hard disk and gradually became known for the number of regular malfunctions and crashes the system suffered. At that time, the security standards were not nearly as high as we wanted them," commented Nico Kretzschmar, who also works in IT management at ODS.
"When Plant 2 was built, we looked at the market for other alternatives and tested a number of different products," added his boss, Andreas Lingk. "Right from the beginning, I was completely fascinated by the potential that the MOBOTIX cameras display: the images are much more brilliant than other solutions can offer. The system is very easy to operate. The network compatibility and configuration are significantly better. The option of managing all the cameras from a central computer in the network had me just as convinced as the fact that the system runs on the standard Linux operating system. This saves us a lot of money in terms of licensing fees. And finally, you get a lot more value for your money compared with other manufacturers."
In the beginning, ODS purchased approximately 80 M1 cameras in different models and then began to expand the camera network step-by-step. Of course, the company has profited from the fact that MOBOTIX has also continued to advance its technology. "During that phase, Loft-Net also came on board," reported Lingk. "One of our security technicians looked around at their in-house exhibition and discovered that this company is incredibly skilled at designing camera networks." As a result, Loft-Net was not only able to install twice the number of cameras in a single network, the company was also able to reduce the network load by 68 %. "This by simply using a very intelligent, proactive configuration," commended Lingk.
Low network load
The system runs on a self-sustaining network that is physically separate from the other corporate computer networks. "MOBOTIX cameras have an extremely low network load, and we didn't want the system performance be negatively affected by other applications," explained Nico Kretzschmar. 264 network cameras, with some 35 of them installed outdoors, collect a huge amount of data, even though the camera recording is event-controlled.
During 4 shifts a day, however, a lot of recording is triggered by events. So it is no small wonder that the ODS system is equipped with a storage capacity of 21 terabytes, with which all the MOBOTIX camera images from seven days are recorded. Every morning, the IT employee checks the 264 e-mails that the cameras have sent him with one status image each. "As a result, we find out about any possible malfunctions quite promptly."
"Mission accomplished!"
Andreas Lingk is very happy with the camera system. "Our security standards more than meet the needs of our customers and the cameras accomplish everything we expect them to do!"
