In a world more obsessed than ever with workflows and processes, Western manufacturing facilities, in particular, are taking more and more cues from their counterparts elsewhere in the world with respect to streamlining their operations. Like it or not, managing visitors has become a prominent responsibility of office administrators or safety managers at facilities of all types, not just manufacturing. Many companies are turning to check-in kiosks paired with visitor management systems (like Transmission) to automate and streamline this process. Beyond simple recordkeeping and name badge printing, though, there are a number of hidden benefits of check-in kiosks that prospective users are not immediately aware of.
Requiring every visitor at your facility to check in at, for instance, a front office, has obvious benefits for the security of your on-premises staff. The alternative approach, simply allowing visitors to enter and leave any door, is not a tenable solution for professional manufacturing facilities, which value not only physical security but also intellectual property protection (via cybersecurity best practices, generally speaking) more than ever before. Funneling all visitors through the same check-in pipeline in the same physical space is a great first step to empowering office administrators to control who is coming in and out of their space.
One of the cornerstones of any modern visitor management system is the ability to consistently collect all the information you need about any visitor who arrives at your facility. Certain, more advanced visitor management systems like Transmission can also differentiate between the different types of visitors you’re receiving and can collect information specific to that unique visit as well. Using a check-in kiosk, as opposed to the legacy approach (visitor logbooks recorded via pen on paper), dramatically decreases the amount of time that office administrators or receptionists have to allocate to dealing with visitors because all the information they need about each visit is automatically captured and recorded in a standardized format.
What all of this means is that, particularly in the context of complex compliance standards, you can rest assured that you’re collecting all the information you’re legally supposed to be collecting about who has access to your facility.
Lastly, requiring visitors to check in can substantially improve communication at your facility. By giving each visitor a “micro-orientation” of, for example, who to contact if they have issues with their key fob, what time they need to return their badge, or even when and where they’re required to be wearing PPE, having this formalized process increases the informational transparency that is unfortunately often lacking at modern manufacturing facilities. Visitor check-in systems like Transmission automate the delivery of all of this information, so you can free up your front desk staff to focus on work that really matters.
While requiring your visitors to check in at your front office won’t solve 100% of your problems as it pertains to visitor management, check-in is increasingly viewed as a necessary first step for visits in the modern era. Whether you’re concerned about bolstering your physical or IP security, improving the rate at which you collect a standardized set of information about your visitors, or simply looking to improve communication around the office, a visitor management system like Transmission can help.
Ready to streamline visitor management at your facility? Let us show you how Transmission can help!