Rolls-Royce Chooses Cellular Technology To Reach Its Employees

19 Sep 2007

A new digital-signage network installed for Rolls-Royce at its design and manufacturing facility in Indianapolis, Indiana is said to be one of the biggest corporate-communications deployments to date to rely on cellular technology.

Spread across five locations including two manufacturing and development plants, each of a million square feet, the 29-screen network enables managers at Rolls-Royce to communicate information on events and products as well as other corporate messaging to 4000 workers.

All content is produced and edited by Rolls-Royce’s corporate-communications department and scheduled using MediaTile’s Web-based Broadcast Portal application, through which the displays are individually or collectively addressable.

“For Rolls-Royce leadership, they now have a tool that can reach the entire workforce in broad strokes,” the company’s Chuck Gose told aka.tv. “It’s not a tool we rely on [as] a sole communication vehicle, but it’s another tool in the belt that we use for message reinforcement.”

According to Gose, content on the network includes company news, announcements, charitable events, recent awards and recognitions, policies and procedures, and information on visiting dignitaries. The network can also play video clips for training and education.

It uses MediaTile’s modules branded as Digital-Sign-In-A-Box, each of which comprises an LCD panel, integrated PC, and cellular receiver. The 32-inch displays are already installed in lobby areas and all break rooms across the five Rolls-Royce Indianapolis locations, with the aim of reaching employees who don’t have daytime access to computers or email.

Replacing CRTs
The Indianapolis network was commissioned to replace Rolls-Royce’s ageing collection of 29-inch CRT-based displays used to play cable news, which Gose says the company was finding difficult to maintain. He explains that Rolls-Royce opted for a cellular – rather than an IP-based or satellite-based – network because of the size of its commercial premises and the logistical difficultly of rewiring the plants, one of which was built in the 1940s.

MediaTile CEO Keith Kelsen says that his company’s cellular-based digital-signage products are a good match for Rolls-Royce, which had originally shelved plans for an internal communications network due to cost concerns before contacting MediaTile.

According to Kelsen, the cellular nature of the plug-and-play MediaTile installation meant that Rolls-Royce could install its network at half the price of a wired, IP-based network, and in half the time such a network would have required.

“Digital signage is not about infrastructure, it’s about content,” he said, noting that clients don’t want to have to hire an entire IT department to operate a network. He calls the Rolls-Royce deployment a “significant entry into the corporate-communications industry”.

The Rolls-Royce installation is the first internal corporate-communications application for MediaTile, which to date has provided digital-signage infrastructure to clients in the retail and banking sectors, including a nationwide installation for Home Depot Canada.

Full article is available here.

Kevin Massy
special to aka.tv