Digital Video Solutions for CCTV Surveillance & Monitoring

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Queue Management

There is probably nothing more frustrating than in beign held in a queue at a supermarket, bank or airport and feeling ignored or badly treated. The fact is that many of us take action when we have received an unsatisfactionary service, by avoiding the use of that service provider again. There may of course be mitigating circumstances for the delay but if you are the service provider the unpalatable fact is that valuable customers could be lost and your reputation damaged. Fortunately we are able to provide an affordable and reliable queue management solution that is either standalone or integrated with our DVR recorders. This can help prevent such situations occurring, enabling you to accurately monitor your customer service levels and establish processes to improve customer satisfaction.

Brickstream queue management solution accurately monitors the number of customers in a queue and the time that they have been waiting. This queue management technology provides real time metrics that help you to re-organise and re-plan your staffing rotas around the actual operational parameters of your business. Experience has shown that by properly allocating labour force and resources to match customer demand at the front-end, cost savings can be achieved while at the same time realizing improvements in customer service levels.

Brickstream technology includes both 2D and 3D analytics that are able to discriminate items of different shape, silhouette and height; providing an additional function to the screening process applied in your detection application. The Brickstream queue management solution can also be deployed to determine whether people in a queue have shopping trolleys or buggies, and can differentiate between adults and children. Applications include amusement and theme parks, ensuring that those queuing exceed the minimum height for specific rides and attractions, thus aiding with health and safety requirements.

Queue management reports, dashboards and web portals

Queue management reports can be accessed through a secure web portal, standard business intelligence tool or as a feed into existing reporting systems, which means authorised staff can easily and quickly access relevant store service information, where and when they need it. Real-time alerts can be set-up to be sent automatically to the store manager or to the relevant personnel, allowing a prompt response when the number of people and the time spent in the queue reaches maximum levels. Alerts, as well as the application, can be received and viewed on handheld devices.

The Brickstream Portal is accessible anywhere, anytime via a secure web interface providing a web-based front end to the central data warehouse where your data is stored; regularly used queries can be saved and new ones easily created, allowing an authorised user to zero in on key metrics.

Brickstream sensors continually measure checkout utilisation and availability, along with actual demand and store footfall patterns, in order to predict requirements and deliver no ambiguity, but just real, consistent and accurate facts, which are key for information gathering when designing and running stores or service areas.

Queue management data is collected in real-time and can be forwarded to a real-time dashboard application in order to generate proactive alerts prior to the front-end breakdown. A straightforward predictive model can be created from store arrival data and the current front-end status, i.e. number of open lanes. With a proactive alerting system, it is possible to alert store staff to future breakdowns in front-end service, prior to their occurrences. The alerting system is self-contained and does not need input from any external systems.

The Queue Management Dashboard is a real-time, customisable, browser-based monitoring tool used by store managers, to immediately identify and improve customer service issues. The dashboard uses both real-time data and predictive algorithms to proactively alert managers of customer service issues. This allows stores to correct customer service problems when or before they occur.

Queue mamagement metrics

All the metrics are measured automatically and accurately and require no inputs from external systems. The metrics can be aggregated by lane type, as well as time-of-day, day-of-week, and other dimensions. The Brickstream queue management technology also supports store-to-store comparisons.

•    Arrivals/Departures (total number of customers who arrived at/departed from the store) - Please view the People Counting technology
•    Queue Length (average, minimum and maximum number of customers waiting in a queue)
•    Queue Wait Times (number of seconds a customer spends waiting in the queue; this metric is based on actual wait-times and is not statistically generated from queue length)
•    Filters (children, shopping trolleys)
•    Wait Distribution
•    Checkout (availability and utilisation)
•    Service Times
•    Lanes Open (number of lanes open for service)
•    Lanes Idle (number of lanes open that had no customer activity during a specified time period)
•    Lanes Out-of-Compliance (total number or percentage of open lanes considered out-of-compliance during a specified time period)
•    Target Lanes Open (total number of open lanes required to meet a customer service objective model based on a store level queue length or customer wait-time objective)
•    Till Utilisation (percentage of time that a service point is occupied)
•    Open Lanes Variance (specifies the total number of lanes for which the front-end is overstaffed or understaffed during a specific time period)
•    Forecasted Expense Impact (a projection of the additional cost increase required or the cost savings obtained when meeting the Target Lanes Open objective)

Brickstream sensor

At the heart of the Brickstream queue management, people counting and people tracking data collection platform is an intelligent video analytics appliance equipped with advanced object tracking algorithms and a stereo vision sensor (15 fps) which provides, with minimum bandwidth (around 100 bps), accurate, reliable and consistent data (heights, shapes, count-once, velocity, shopping units) without any data manipulation, assumptions and ambiguity. This unique combination of object tracking and stereo-vision allow this sensor to provide accurate and consistent tracking of people, as they pass through the field of view. It has the ability to distinguish between adults, children, and shopping trolleys, as well as other objects. The stereo vision sensor provides unmatched accuracy and tolerance in all environments.

The Brickstream solution implementation avoids any privacy issue: raw video images are in memory for only milliseconds or can be replaced with a ‘video overlay' view. The system does not, during normal operation, store any video (exception is during validation audits).

Each appliance is fully autonomous; processing images at 12 to 15 images per second, and storing and forwarding data every 60 seconds. The data-stream can also be transmitted to an in-store server running real-time applications, typically at a frequency of every 2 seconds, in order to provide instantaneous and predictive information with respect to front-end performance and real-time alerting to assist in real-time front-end management. The Brickstream sensor is a Power-over-Ethernet IP addressable device with an embedded web server, providing both local and remote configuration, support and management.

This Low Power Consumption (4w) sensor is provided with on-board resilience (network and power), IP65/66 Compliant and TUV accreditation and upgradeable firmware which make this solution a low total-cost-of-ownership intelligent system.
This sensor delivers a wide field of view: if mounted at 4 meters high, it can cover approximately 25 squares metres. The sensor can be installed in or outdoors, at an angle, on ceilings from 2.1 to 12 metres high and it can also work in the dark (2 Lux).

queue management device