Japan’s AEON Delight Marketing Sensor-Driven Data Dashboards For Facility Users And Operators

July 28, 2022 by Dave Haynes

A Japanese facilities management firm has started marketing a system that uses sensors to monitor the state of restrooms and trash cans, with the operating goal of reducing cleaning costs and building user stress.

AEON DELIGHT CO., LTD. will start offering its “Restroom and Trash Can IoT System” in August – targeting commercial facilities, offices, event venues, and other busy spaces. The goal is to have  more than 150 facilities using the service by February 2024.

One of the keys to the system is digital signage – using sensor data to push real-time updates to screens viewed by both staff and users. Building operations and cleaning staff see dashboards that indicate how busy restrooms are and their need for cleaning, as well as the volume of garbage in trash cans (using a weight sensor) and the internal temperature of the cans. Building users see dashboards that indicate the level of activity and availability of toilet stalls, load-balancing the building by sending people to the less-busy restrooms.

There is also a Networked CO2 Concentration Monitoring System – which displays CO2 concentration in the room, informing building visitors about air quality efforts but also set to trigger alarms if certain thresholds are exceeded.

Along with dashboard displays, data summaries can be viewed on smartphones.

Says the company:

The service uses wireless sensors to provide real-time information on restrooms, such as availabilities and frequency of use, and the amount of waste deposited in trash cans and the internal temperature. This will help to improve satisfaction of facility users, reduce cleaning costs by optimizing the cleaning frequency, and improve safety and security of facilities. The service visualizes restroom availabilities on a digital signages. By installing the digital signages in crowded areas of facilities, users can check the status. This will reduce users’ stress caused by crowded restroom and lead to user satisfaction. Avoiding gathering in crowded places will also help prevent COVID-19.

I like this stuff. It is probably boring as hell for the sales people to talk about – “Well, our company has a system that shows restroom availability and cleanliness …” – but will resonate with the right audience. Six and seven-figure LED video walls with custom content get the Ooohs and Aaahs in meetings and demos, but this very pedestrian stuff can make a building work better and its users happier.

Dashboards with charting can do things like give managers a better sense of how much time and resources to allocate – whether that’s not needing to clean as often as expected, or the opposite.

What’s happening right now, using real-time data, should be something factored into just about any digital signage project – particularly given how easy it is now to access data and how cheap and easy sensors can be.

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