5 Ways You Could be Using Alarm Data

Prevent Losses and Optimize Production

Reliable alarms are the first line of defense against losses and inefficiencies on any operation. They’re also the bedrock for achieving optimal production. Like your insurance policy, alarms are the shield safeguarding your enterprise when an emergency strikes. Without them, there’s nothing protecting you from losing your most valuable asset. Here are five ways you could be using alarm data to stop losses before they happen, and in turn, maximize performance on your operation:

1. Know if Alarms are Turned On

It sounds simple, but knowing whether or not alarms are enabled at a site can be the difference between losing a barn full of animals and preventing a catastrophic death loss event before it happens. With the BarnTalk mobile app, you can see whether or not a Gateway has alarms enabled. The Weekly Summary inside the BarnTalk Command Center also includes a list of Gateways and sensors with alarms silenced. This information provides growers with peace of mind, and production managers insight into whether or not their sites are being monitored and protected to the fullest extent.

2. Complete Alarm History

Alarm history data can take the guesswork out of pinpointing the cause of a barn emergency and how it was addressed. The Alarm History Report inside the BarnTalk Command Center shows a complete list of when an alarm was triggered, what the alarm was for, and when it was acknowledged. This provides production managers visibility into how facilities are being managed, such as the types of alarms being triggered at a site, and how often they’re taking place. It can even help growers reduce their alarm response time.

3. Alarm Notification History

If an emergency strikes your operation, it’s critical to know exactly how it was handled to reduce future inefficiencies. The BarnTalk Alarm Notification History report shows who was notified of an alarm and when. It also shows what kind of notification they received — text message, phone call, or push notification. Using this data, production managers can verify who was notified of the issue to increase accountability and ensure emergencies are being resolved effectively.

4. Real–Time and Historical Sensor Readings

Why record daily high-low temps manually when you can automate it? Along with viewing sensor readings in real-time, BarnTalk users can view a 7-day history of sensor readings inside the mobile app — from temps to water and humidity. This data saves growers time, but it also helps illustrate trends that could impact your bottom line, including a fluctuation in temp, or a sudden drop in water consumption that could indicate a health problem.

5. Customize Alarm Thresholds

The value in customizing alarm thresholds with BarnTalk is twofold. One, they serve to immediately detect when your operation is at risk — from alerting you of excessively warm temps to a burst water pipe. Second, alarm thresholds can be correlated with other performance indicators throughout the production cycle to improve performance. For example, a grower might observe lower mortality in a barn with a High-Temp Emergency Threshold of 80° compared to a barn with a High-Temp Emergency Threshold of 85°. Overtime, site managers can use this data to standardize alarm thresholds based on which growers are yielding the strongest production outcomes.