HANSHIN ELECTRIC RAILWAY CO.,　LTD.

The "Hanshin Anshin Service Mimamorume" provides by communicating the whereabouts of local children commuting to and from school to their parents. The "Mimamorume" system offers two types of email notification services: sending emails and group emails when a child reaches or leaves school. In the case of the former, when a child passes through the school entrance, the receiving antenna installed at the entrance obtains data from the chip tag in the child's backpack, and a notification is automatically sent to the registered email address. In the case of the latter, a group notification email is sent from the school to the parents.

This service is provided by HANSHIN ELECTRIC RAILWAY CO., LTD. （hereafter called Hanshin Electric) You may ask why a railroad company is working on providing community security. Katsuma Nishioka, Section Manager of Hanshin Electric's New Business Promotion Office explains that "The corporate philosophy of Hanshin Electric is to provide the community with relief."

Hanshin Electric provides railway service connecting the cities of Osaka and Kobe in Western Japan, but it is also involved in the real estate and entertainment sectors. The company is involved in various businesses with the mission to provide comfort, dreams, emotion, and reliability to people living along its routes. "Mimamorume" is a project developed based on a child tracking notification system with which the railway company has been involved. "Anshin Gupas is a service that sends notification to a registered email address when a child commuting to or from school scans their commuter chip card at the train station. Due to the acclaim of this system, we developed the "Mimamorume" GPS tracking service. Mr. Nishioka said.

In April 2011, the "Mimamorume" GPS tracking system was officially launched as a paid service. Until then, a trial period was created, and the company looked into which manufacturer's computer to use.

"The important thing when providing this type of service is reliability. The device installed next to the school entrance is in a housing board, but it is always located outdoors. Naturally, in the summer it gets hot, and in the winter it gets cold. Therefore, it‘s essential that it dose not fail in this type of rigorous environment. In addition, the equipment must be able to continually operate accurately without time lags when sending notifications to the registered email addresses." Mr. Nishioka said.

The Contec's embedded Box Computer was chosen after undergoing a strict examination. Nishioka gave great praise to Contec. "Group company ITEC Hankyu Hanshin Co., Ltd. was in charge of researching the equipment, and to be honest, Contec's products stood out from the rest in terms of reliability." Because this child and school-related service creates strong ties among parents and schools and information is exchanged quickly by word of mouth, if there were even the tiniest problem, it would make it difficult right away for the service to get off the ground. "The service, which started in 2011, has steadily expanded and is now implemented at over 450 schools. Contec embedded computers are used in the email notification system, and there are over 250,000 users of the two types of email notifications." Mr. Nishioka said.

In addition, the technology can earn our trust with the limited malfunctions and reduce the time and effort required for maintenance. What's more, the embedded computer has a full interface that does not have to be customized and can be implemented without changing the specifications according to the school. That alone reduces the amount of work required during installation.

Nishioka wants to see the "Mimamorume" GPS tracking system extended to the entire country in the future. As Nishioka talks about plans to expand the business, you can sense the unwavering confidence he has in Contec products.