Case Study: Hendrick Motorsports
Hendrick Motorsports drives excellence with Interactive Flat Panel Displays, state-of-the-art Projectors and Print Management
About the customer
Ricoh interactive whiteboards have made us much more efficient. We can now come up with ideas and work through them faster before putting them into production.
Dave Paronto Competition Systems Engineer
Challenge
- Lack of interactive technology tools to enhance pit crew training
- Manual, multi-step whiteboard collaboration process
- Lack of bright, vibrant projection technology to display race footage
- Overgrown print fleet, lack of visibility into costs
Each of Hendrick Motorsports' four race teams has a pit crew where members practice and work on techniques to improve their pit stops. Yet the technology they used to analyze race footage was time consuming and lacked interactive functionality. Footage was viewed on a monitor or laptop — with no ability to easily freeze frame, stop or edit to enhance discussions and training.
Likewise, collaboration between Hendrick Motorsports' engineers, designers, mechanics and fabricators was mostly manual and required multiple steps. That's because they used traditional wall-mounted whiteboards and Post-it Notes to collaborate in meetings. When the meeting ended, staff had to take a picture of their ideas and email it to meeting attendees to preserve their progress. After multiple meetings, it became increasingly difficult to determine which version was most recent.
From a print management standpoint, Hendrick Motorsports had an overgrown fleet of aging MFPs and printers. It also had no visibility into its fleet to track print costs, volumes and usage data.
Furthermore, Hendrick Motorsports has two large presentation centers on campus to host events or provide large, off-site meeting space for other corporations in the area. Given the size of the rooms, the traditional projection technology in place lacked brightness, vibrancy and clarity to properly capture the excitement of race footage or make corporate presentations come alive.
Results
- In-depth, interactive analysis of race footage
- Faster collaboration for engineers, designers, mechanics and fabricators
- Vibrant displays for high-profile presentations
- Reduced print fleet costs by 40%, enabled informed decision-making
Training of Hendrick Motorsports' pit crews is now seamless and fast. Crew performance and anomalies with car designs can be more thoroughly analyzed and communicated from the corporate office to the race track. In turn, corporate engineers, designers and fabricators are now equipped with interactive tools that help them develop, model and produce high-performance, champion race cars. For high-profile presentations, Hendrick Motorsports can now convey the thrill of race day through stunning visuals.
The reduced, modernized print fleet has decreased Hendrick Motorsports print-related costs by 40 percent. With fewer printers, there's less service and supplies required. Tracking software on the MFPs has enabled transparency in print costs, volumes and use so Hendrick Motorsports can make informed decisions and work smarter. The company also taps MyRicoh.com regularly to assess toner levels and device usage as well as chat with a Ricoh representative.
How We Did It
"Working with Ricoh, we all come together with one goal in mind — we want to be champions."
Chris Newsome Director of Infrastructure, IT & Facilities
- Provided interactive flat panel displays (IFPDs)
- Installed state-of-the-art projection technology
- Downsized and right-sized the printing fleet
- Implemented tracking technology with new print fleet
We provided an interactive flat panel display (IFPD) in the pit coach's office that allows pulling down video from a Cloud app environment to watch practice videos and freeze frame at any point to determine what pit crew performance improvements are needed. The pit crews can highlight, annotate and circle areas on the display and then print it out or save online for future reference. Another IFPD was placed in a common area and it displays project management software for Hendrick Motorsports' design and engineering teams. With this system, the teams can collaborate any time and see progress in real time, make updates, and interactively move to the next phase in the project.
We also installed IFPDs in two conference rooms for more formal meetings where teams can mark up projects, annotate, and email the final design file to the onsite fabrication shop for modeling. State-of-the-art projectors were installed in Hendrick Motorsports' main presentation centers to make the presentation of race footage or other information vibrant and visible.
In addition, we conducted an analysis of Hendrick Motorsports' print environment and determined they needed a fleet refresh, far fewer MFPs and printers and enhanced capabilities for scanning, color and finishing. We reduced their fleet from 40 to 20 MFPs and installed software to track costs, print volumes and usage data. Thanks to our success in enhancing collaboration and operations throughout the company, Ricoh is now the official workplace technology partner to Hendrick Motorsports.
