Case Study: Lighting Expert TRILUX

The Case Study at a Glance

Alert quickly and easily with GroupAlarm

Group photo of the plant fire department in uniform in front of a red fire truck.

Small Plant Fire Department with Big Tasks

“Welcome to the world of light. Welcome to the world of TRILUX.” With these words, the corporate film of the lighting expert from Sauerland begins. What originated in 1912 from the enthusiasm of engineer Wilhelm Lenze for artificial light developed within a few decades into an international company with approximately 5,000 employees worldwide today. In addition to the continuous improvement of light quality, the focus is increasingly on the user-friendliness of the products and the responsible use of resources. The company's values, shaped by its founder Lenze himself, are still deeply rooted: tireless pioneering spirit, high quality awareness, and a vigilant eye for customer needs. So much innovation simultaneously requires foresight for the protection of the production facility and its employees. For safety at the headquarters in Arnsberg – in the event of a fire, for example – the in-house fire department is responsible.

Firefighters from the TRILUX plant fire department during a fire drill with water hoses on a company premises.

Independent of own Infrastructure

To quickly and reliably alert the 18-member team of the plant fire department, the web-based alerting and communication platform GroupAlarm is used. With its diverse alerting channels, it ensures that emergency personnel, who are also all active in volunteer fire departments in their free time, can be reached anytime and anywhere. Unlike the municipal fire department, their various activities at TRILUX give them better local knowledge and allow them to reach the scene faster. Together with the highly available alerting platform GroupAlarm, this is the foundation for minimizing damage. The personnel themselves are alerted via alarm call, email alarm, and via the Alarm App. Dominik Weber, head of the Plant Fire Department Alerting project, reports: “In addition to the simple triggering of the alarm, the advantage is that GroupAlarm functions completely autonomously. This is because the alerting solution can operate entirely without existing resources. This means: If there is a network and thus telephony failure, the plant fire department can still be alerted.”

Two firefighters from the TRILUX plant fire department with breathing masks holding a pressure hose.

Formerly GroupAlarm standard, today GroupAlarm.com

It all began in 2011 when TRILUX opted for the predecessor version of today's GroupAlarm. The use at that time focused on alerting the factory fire department by phone call. Since then, requirements have continuously increased. "In our company, alerting is done via a constantly staffed gate, which triggers an alarm in case of an emergency. This must work simply and straightforwardly at that moment," explains Weber. "With the Software-as-a-Service solution GroupAlarm, we can implement exactly that. The gatekeeper can trigger the alerting process on his iPad with a single push of a button using URL buttons stored for various incident keywords. From then on, this process is carried out completely autonomously." In the future, other functions such as the alarm monitor will also be used, for example, to visualize the feedback from colleagues collectively. By switching to the new version of GroupAlarm, TRILUX's plant fire department achieves a significant simplification of its entire alerting process, which saves valuable time in an emergency.

Member of the TRILUX plant fire department spraying water on large metal silos during an exercise.

Everything a Plant Fire Department Needs

Overall, the experiences of TRILUX's plant fire department with the alerting solution, which has proven itself with blue-light organizations for over 20 years, can be summarized as follows: In addition to intuitive operation and resulting simple alerting, GroupAlarm offers increased accessibility for emergency forces through alerting via the Alarm App. It is also practical that the integrated feedback function immediately clarifies whether individual members can participate in an operation. The advantage that GroupAlarm functions completely independently of its own network, in contrast to solutions that first need to be installed, provides enormous alerting flexibility. Ultimately, all these measures contribute to the goal of ensuring the protection of people and assets.

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Image sources: TRILUX GmbH & Co. KG