R.A.C publication

Marks & Spencer   has saved a great deal of money by remotely monitoring some of its stores via the internet. Steve Nicoll explains Marks & Spencer has made a saving of £15,000 in the last month - by doing absolutely nothing. The money represents the time & effort that the company’s own store staff have saved thanks to remote monitoring.

The company also saved more than 1000 night call outs in the same period because remote monitoring could see the alarms had cleared themselves.

Resource Data Management (RDM) has been providing a remote monitoring service to Marks & Spencer for more than two years. The system is interactive and allows all the players to see exactly what’s going on via a dedicated website.

The system can track asset numbers, job numbers, job status, recalls, and key performance indicators. It is designed to give the operators at RDM’s bureau in Glasgow all the information they need on one screen. They can instantly see the history of an asset, how often it has alarmed, what types of alarm and what maintenance requirements the asset has had. The system will automatically dial into site and retrieve graphs, set points and operational data for any fridge.

This all transfers into real business benefits. Panic service calls late at night have all but been eliminated, Store staff are free to get on with the real task of running a store and service companies are finally provided with the sort of information they need to regain control of their service operation.

RDM has also launched a new control and alarm monitoring system. This is based around a range of case controllers called Mercury and a front end system called a Data Director. The entire system is designed to use Internet Protocol (IP). The user runs up Internet Explorer and looks at the system as if it were a website.

The Mercury controllers are a technological breakthrough. There are only two models to think about - one for mechanical expansion valves and one for electronic expansion valves. Having made that decision, each type is capable of being used as an HT or LT, Integral or remote or coldroom controller and the same controller can be used on either an IP front-end or existing system.

They come complete with a display and you don’t need another special set up unit to use them. Everything can be accessed through the buttons on the front or you can connect up a laptop, or you can view them through the front end.

At RDM we publish all product documentation on our website. From here you can also get a free copy of the Communicator software to connect a laptop to the Mercury range.

RDM is just about to launch a range of pack controllers. There will be two models - a standard step controller that uses a dead band pressure switch, and a variable pressure controller that uses transducers.

Marks & Spencer have given RDM tremendous support, and this culminated in May when they opened a new store in Truro. This features many of the RDM products and we believe it is the first true IP store to open anywhere in the world. The store has been flood wired with Cat 5 cabling. This enabled the contractors to put the fridges wherever they are needed and simply plug them into the nearest data port. The Data Director sees them appear and logs them onto the system. They are then automatically fed through to the monitoring bureau and are instantly on line and on the web.

Since Truro opened there have been two new stores and several refit stores successfully followed suit, more are on the way.

RDM - Shaping the future