Posted by French Williams, IT Director, Royal Technologies


Editor's note: Today we hear from French Williams, IT director of the Michigan-based Royal Technologies, a 25-year-old engineering and manufacturing company specializing in plastic solutions for the automotive, furniture and consumer product industries. Read how Royal Technologies replaced its digital signage system with an affordable, easy-to-manage Chrome for Work solution with help from their partner Promevo, a premier Google Apps and Chromebook reseller.


When you think of advanced engineering and manufacturing, you probably don’t think of signage. But at Royal Technologies, digital signs powered by Chrome allowed us to communicate with our team of 1,200 employees in new ways, improved uptime by five to 10 percent on our factory floors and saved us $20,000 in the first year alone.

The digital sign in the photograph runs on Chromebit and displays a 1080p video about the different products Royal Technologies makes.

Our partner Promevo recommended the affordable Chromebit signage solution that’s working so well for us today. It’s a small ChromeOS computing stick you can plug into any screen with a HDMI port. We were already using 142 Chromebooks, Chromebox desktops and Chromebox for meetings for everything from IT computing to giving shop-floor operators access to manufacturing job paperwork, documenting work orders for our maintenance department, company meetings and performing transactions in our material requirements planning system. Some employees have even started using Chromebooks as their primary work computers. So we didn’t hesitate to give Chromebit a try.

Since we were already using Chrome, we were able to quickly and easily deploy each Chromebit for digital signage in just 15 minutes. Promevo’s customer support also showed us how to use the Google Admin Console to manage our digital signage. We learned that we could manage our signage and our Chromebooks from the same interface.

In just a few weeks, we updated a variety of digital signs across the company using Chromebits.
Digital signs on the factory floor in five of our six locations now display the latest production data. This data automatically updates every 15 seconds and shows our employees weekly goals for machine uptime. Displaying this goal-driven information has improved uptime from five to 10 percent on our factory floors.

With the $20,000 we saved in one year by switching all the old signage solutions to Chrome, we’re now in a position to expand our use of digital signage throughout the company. We’re now using 11 Chromebits and counting — we bought ten more to use across our locations very soon after trying out the first one. We’re also planning to add Chromebits to the reception areas of our facilities, too.

Chrome device management helps us manage all of our devices more easily, and streamlines software and OS updates. The Chromebit was a better hardware solution for our manufacturing environment because its lack of moving components makes it less susceptible to problems caused by heat and dust on the shop floor.

The combination of Chrome Digital Signage and Promevo's expert guidance and support helps us deliver plastic solutions efficiently without straining our resources.

Posted by Vidya Nagarajan, Senior Product Manager, Chrome & Android, Google for Work & Education 

Editor's note: To learn more about managing intelligent Chrome devices, join our Chrome product team for a Hangout on Air on Thursday, November 19th at 10AM PST.

More and more businesses across the globe are using DIY-service models and integrated mobile, digital signage and kiosk technology to personalize their customer experience.

While the customer experience is enhanced, the administration experience needs to stay simple. That’s why we developed the web-based Chrome Device Management Console, which allows business owners to remotely manage their fleet of devices across all their storefronts. "We tried many different solutions, using Google for signage was the easiest to push, control and manage throughout the enterprise,” said Alan Mariotti, Vice President of Technology and Security at Chico’s. In fact, IDC found that Chrome customers they spoke to averaged a three-year ROI of 319% for Chrome devices when used in kiosk mode, with an investment break-even time of approximately 4.8 months.

Today we’re introducing a more streamlined console just for digital signs and kiosks called Single App Chrome Device Management (Single App CDM), priced at $24 per device per year. Single App CDM offers ongoing reporting that monitors the health of your kiosks and signage at all times. You’ll get alerts if a device goes down and can remotely reboot the device without dispatching a technician. You can also get live updates about system usage and capture screen grabs to see exactly what viewers see.

Single App CDM can be used with a variety of Chrome devices – like the ASUS Chromebit, which is available for purchase today – to share relevant content quickly and simply, with the flexibility and security to seamlessly integrate into a broad spectrum of signage configurations. For example, the menu boards at a coffee shop or cafe could be powered by Chrome devices like the Chromebox, Chromebase and Chromebit, running a Chrome Kiosk app that displays relevant, dynamic content. Combined with our rich partner ecosystem of Chrome Kiosk apps from StratosMedia, Telemetry, Arreya, SignageLive, Wondersign, Nutrislice, Chrome Sign builder and many others, we have a solution to support any scenario.

To learn more about how other organizations are using Chrome OS to deliver signage, check out this new IDC white paper.