Cameras help Clarks save £250,000 in three months

KNAPP UK's resident customer support team at the distribution centre of shoe retailer Clarks has used thermal imaging techniques to save the customer in excess of a quarter of a million pounds in potential repair and downtime costs in just three months.

State-of-the-art thermal imaging cameras are used routinely at all four of KNAPP's UK sites with a resident service team. Explains Ebb Kretschmer, head of customer services: "We use thermal imaging as part of our regular maintenance regimes. It is highly effective and allows us to be proactive rather than reactive to faults and failures." At Clarks' warehouse in Somerset, thermal imaging highlighted a damaged motor and gearbox, a problem PLC, a phase imbalance on a shrink-wrapping machine and damage to the X-axis on a stacker crane.

Kevin Ashman, site manager, says: "We would never have found these risky problems at this stage without the thermal imaging equipment.

Correcting these faults in a controlled way avoided breakdowns that would have been extremely costly for Clarks."