Stopping After-Hours Loss at a Sterling Heights Distribution Warehouse

The Challenge

A mid-sized automotive parts distributor operating a roughly 80,000-square-foot warehouse in Sterling Heights came to us after a string of after-hours inventory losses. High-value components were disappearing between shifts, and the existing setup — a handful of aging analog cameras covering only the front office — couldn't tell them how, when, or where it was happening. The loading docks, the back receiving area, and the yard were effectively blind. On top of the theft, management had no way to know who was in the building after hours, because everyone still used the same physical keys that had been copied many times over the years.

They needed three things at once: real visibility across the whole facility, a way to control and log who came and went, and footage they could actually pull and rely on if an incident ended up with the police or an insurer.

The Solution

We started where we start every project: a free on-site assessment, walking the entire property to map coverage before recommending a single camera. The plan that came out of that walk-through prioritized the points that actually mattered — every dock door, the receiving and shipping bays, the high-value storage aisles, the main entrances, and the perimeter yard.

The final design used 24 NDAA-compliant IP cameras, a mix of fixed cameras for aisles and doors and wider-angle units for the open warehouse floor and yard. Because this client supplies the automotive sector, NDAA compliance wasn't optional — non-compliant equipment could have put their contracts at risk during an audit. We paired the cameras with a hybrid storage setup: 90 days of full-resolution recording on an on-site NVR, with the critical dock and entrance cameras also pushed to the cloud, so footage would survive even if someone walked off with the recorder.

We replaced the copied-key problem with modern access control on six doors, giving each employee a unique mobile credential. Now every entry is logged to a person and a timestamp, and a lost credential is deactivated in seconds instead of triggering a re-key. Cameras and access were tied together, so an after-hours door event automatically flags the nearest camera. Every cable was run and terminated by our own licensed W-2 technicians — no subcontractors on site at any point.

The Result

The after-hours losses stopped. With full dock and aisle coverage in place, the blind spots that had made the thefts possible were gone, and the access logs gave management a clear, accountable picture of who was in the building and when. Within the first month, the system also paid for itself in an unexpected way: clear footage of a forklift incident in the yard resolved a liability dispute quickly, without it turning into a drawn-out claim.

Just as important, the owner can now open an app from anywhere and see any camera at the facility in real time, or pull a clip in seconds if something comes up. What had been a source of constant worry became infrastructure they simply stopped thinking about.

Why Michigan Security Systems

This was a textbook example of why we design every system around the building instead of selling a package. The camera count followed the coverage plan, the storage was sized to a real retention need, and the NDAA-compliant equipment protected the client's own supply-chain contracts. And because our own technicians handle every installation start to finish — never subcontractors — there was one accountable team behind the work, which is exactly what matters when a system is protecting your business. It's the same approach behind our commercial camera installations and access control systems across Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana.