Did ERM Systems Prove their Worth During the COVID-19 Pandemic?

In Indiana, Burt’s Termite & Pest Control started testing ERM stations during the beta period of development for one manufacturer and quickly realized new benefits. Not only do ERM systems work as a 24/7 monitoring technician on-site, but they can reach other areas of a warehouse or food-processing facility that technicians would never have time to examine during normal inspections.

“When we were first using stations years ago, we put these traps in locations based on an auditor’s spacing,” said Doug Foster, Burt’s president. “Now with ERM, we’re basing those locations on science from what our data from history is telling us on where we’re catching rodents.”

Foster says there are many areas of a commercial facility where a technician can’t get to during a normal inspection without doubling or tripling the amount of time, thus losing productivity and money. ERM stations are the opposite – adding higher productivity by eliminating excess manpower hours and allowing the technician to do other work.

“Years ago, we’d have 20 sensors, and we would check most weekly or every other week,” Foster said. “Then we found if we put ERM stations in areas that we don’t get to each time, like above a dropped ceiling or a mezzanine area used for storage, or areas not typically thought of as accessed by rodents like a maintenance area in a plant or a factory with no food there. Those are quiet areas that are cluttered, so we put them in out-of-the way areas that were a timesaving area, so we didn’t need to get a ladder to inspect periodically.

“ERM has been a huge timesaver for us, for not having to access ladders or put someone in a precarious position of getting up there all the time. First you put traps around a factory setting or inside or around dock doors or service doors. Then you put them in the middle of the maybe 50,000-square-foot, food-processing plant or distribution center and they have areas prone to rodents that escaped around the traps or brought in like a trojan horse. Like pallets of dog food that might have been shipped in and the rodents weren’t caught during receiving. You might have 30 bags of dog food on a pallet, and they can’t see in the middle of them. ERM can detect that activity.”