Dahua opens new facility in Massachusetts

IRVINE, Calif.—Dahua Technology, a global manufacturer of video surveillance solutions, is expanding its U.S. operations on the East Coast with a new facility in Franklin, Mass., to accommodate the company's rapid growth.

One of key areas of focus at the new facility, which joins Dahua's other location here on the West Coast, is on cutting-edge technologies including deep learning, artificial intelligence, and business analytics, which the company highlighted at ISC West last week.

“Being that we are partnering with NVIDIA and Movidius by Intel, that is what our engineers will be developing on the East Coast, as we see how we can further integrate our cameras with that new technology,” Janet Fenner, head of marketing, Dahua Technology, USA, told Security Systems News. Dahua has already begun to offer some of these technologies on select cameras.

At ISC West, the company announced that it is working with NVIDIA to bring AI functionality to its next-generation deep learning products. Equipped with NVIDIA GPUs, the Dahua DeepSense advanced high-capacity video analytics server provides deep learning capabilities, delivering a powerful, scalable method of extracting rich metadata and processing structural data to deliver fast and accurate analytics.

Dahua also announced that Movidius' Myriad 2 Vision Processing Unit (VPU) technology will power select Dahua video surveillance cameras with advanced intelligence functions that train the devices to gather, analyze, and retain information much like the human brain.

Another focus Dahua is bringing to the new East Coast facility is a complete technical and partner care support center.

“We are going to have a total tech support team there, because we boast the best tech-support in the industry,” said Fenner. “We have a 90-percent resolve rate within the first call and we have less than a one minute wait time on every single tech support call, so not only do we have 15 tech support people on the West Coast, but we are looking to put another 15 on the East Coast.”

With the launch of Dahua's new All-Star Partner Program, “the ability to support our customers and partners is our number one priority, and our new East Coast facility is a testimony to the commitment to achieve this goal,” she said. “A differentiator in the market that we are doing is having customer support specialists there dedicated to that All-Star Partner Program. And on top of that, we also have our partner care program, which is us checking in on our partners to ask, 'How did we do on this?' and 'How are we doing?'”

The new facility will also be used as an East Coast repair center, complementing the existing repair facility in California.

Dahua is also looking to expand its footprint in Texas, where the company is actively exploring a strategic plan to open an additional U.S. facility to manufacture select products to comply with the Buy American Act.

“We are looking to open a facility in Texas this year and it will be something that is a little bit different, as we do plan to do some assembly there, and we will be using a focused product,” said Fenner. “We want to see ourselves as not only a Chinese company but something to be reckoned with in the U.S. … even looking into possibly manufacturing in the U.S. somewhere in the future.”