Meridian Brick Partners with Samsara to Enhance Production Efficiency with Real-Time Data

Samsara first appeared on David’s radar during a quarterly best practices review where the plant manager for their Phenix City facility shared insights on using Samsara sensors for monitoring dryer temperatures. After further conversations, David realized Samsara’s Manufacturing Analytics solution, with its automatic downtime logging and flexible connectivity options, was a great answer to their most immediate data challenges surrounding inaccurate manual data. They had explored other solutions in the past, but they either didn’t have the connectivity options for their facilities or were priced for much larger enterprises. Samsara offered a compelling feature set at a price point that made it a no-brainer. Unlike other solutions - which required Wi-Fi access and created broader corporate concerns around network privacy - Samsara was able to provide the Manufacturing Analytics solution entirely through cellular signal, allowing for fast and secure deployment to get the system up and running. The plant managers for Meridian Brick’s Columbia and Augusta facilities quickly saw the value of Samsara Manufacturing Analytics as well, and both sites were able to self-install Samsara with minimal support. Samsara’s ease of use has made it an instant hit on the production floor as well. Operators at the Columbia facility were able to start and stop runs, enter downtime reasons, and view production progress through the Samsara HMI interface with zero training. Compared to the hours of manual work previously needed each week to log data, input the data into spreadsheets, and create customized reports, adding new products or shift schedules could be done in the Samsara dashboard in just a few clicks.