Industrial automation – success stories
IoT, as a technology is pushing the boundaries of automation in almost all the major industries in the world, by helping small and mid size business improve efficient, accountability and reduce resources. We have been delivering industrial grade, wireless asset monitoring solutions for shipping, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics , warehouse, distribution and cold chain industries.
Asset condition monitoring for ZF Wind Power
Wireless sensor solutions for temperature sensing of a 33 KV high voltage transformer. Thrilled to see the performance and the immense opportunity it opens for condition monitoring of critical assets like transformers and electrical panels. Thank you
A remote asset tracking and condition monitoring solution consisting of smart sensors, access points and IOT gateway developed and deployed at ZF Wind Power unit. The initial set of sensors consisted of vibration and temperature measurement functions. The solution was deployed as a stand-alone solution, on a dedicated server. The data which the solution based platform fetched was integrated to the in-house software for further analysis.
The solution was used on various machineries for condition monitoring and performance. The data gave insights which the team had no access before. The solution was used on overhead crane motors, forklifts, transformers and electrical panels. Accelerometer sensors measured the tilt of the cranes and fork lifts. All these assets were tagged using Active RFID sensors and the access points were places at ideal locations to maximise the line of sight. The simplicity of the solution and the data it gave access to, won huge accolades for the team.
Factory equipment condition monitoring
Our client is a leading bakery product company with factory based in West Singapore. The client wanted a wireless sensor solution for condition monitoring their plant and machinery, to understand the working environment, heating, usage of certain specialised motors etc. Due to the rugged nature of the old plant, they were not in a position to re-wire the installation and wanted a retrofit solution. We designed a Zigbee sensor based industrial automation system along with a software dashboard that provided periodic data on various operating parameters, which in turn assisted our client optimise their production and maintenance schedules. Repair and maintenance costs were reduced by 4.5% as a result of deploying our solution to create success stories.
IOT success at workplace safety in construction
“Vehicular incidents were the highest contributor to workplace fatalities during this period,” said MOM Singapore. The ministry had also conducted over 400 inspections of factories and construction sites, focusing on workplace traffic management practices, during these five months.
This client had a 20,000 sq feet storage area with multiple bays for stacking finished goods that are dispatched to many locations across the country and Malaysia. We designed a Zigbee wireless sensor based industrial automation system, which detected the movement of forklifts within the storage bays. The forklifts were fitted with non invasive speed detection sensors to alert supervisors on the threshold violation by forklift operators. The entire forklift movement matrices are made available on the dashboard software for the company to assess workplace safety practices.
Pilferage detection system – energy management company
One of the major problems the fleet owners or transportation company faces is theft of shipments or its attached variables during transit. Our client, a leading energy management company approached us for a solution to detect attempts to open oil valves from transformers during its transit. They wanted to track oil pilferage from these transformers and prevent people from tampering with the same. In the past we had successfully delivered IoT solutions in transportation and logistics domain . The “things” in transportation solutions might be sensors, engines, dashboards, cameras and even the tires. But here the challenge was we need to monitor the theft of a consignment variable on the move.
A battery powered nRF node is placed on the vulnerable parts of the consignment. When the node is subjected to tampering in any way, it sends the information to cloud using 3G connectivity and triggers real time alerts having location info. A GPS gateway device attached to the truck handles the communication part. Add-On sensors would be installed to measure vital parameters like temperature, humidity, tilt and shock and would send real time data to the shipment owners during transit. The client will get both text and email alerts whenever there is consignment tampering. The automation deployment success has been huge for the client.
Solar powered greenhouse automation
The first among our IOT success stories is of a client who is a Kenya based farming group wanting to establish solar powered wireless monitoring solution for his greenhouses and vertical farms. Many farmers and farming communities all over the world are in lookout for smart farming technologies for their farms or greenhouses. The implementation of automation in farming techniques has led to better productivity and yield output.
The agriculture sensor modules should continuously monitor the environment and soil conditions inside the greenhouse. They also wanted to automate their irrigation process based on soil moisture deficit and variations in temperature & humidity. The soil pH conditions also needed to be analysed and corrective measures needed to be taken. If there are any variations in the measured parameters, client should be duly notified via text message along with the concerned coordinates of the fault.
Our team, who have already established themselves as a credible automation solutions expert for smart farms approached this project in a unique way. Since the greenhouses were set up in Africa, the team had to undergo a thorough check of the environmental and soil conditions of the locality. The idea was to select the best possible sensor modules for the industrial grade solution. The client had insisted the automation solution to address mainly five environmental parameters namely soil moisture, pH level, greenhouse temperature, atmospheric humidity and ambient light. The greenhouse automation solution helps farmers reduce supervision and inspection costs.
Water trough monitoring system – cattle farm
Among the IOT success stories, the one down under is interesting. Our client based in Australia, wanted to install water trough monitoring system for their large cattle farm. Cattle farms would generally comprise of stable complex and vast graze lands. The cattle would be usually fended to these graze lands for the whole day. There would be water troughs, of different shapes and size installed in these graze lands for the cattle to drink from. Our client wanted to monitor the level of water in these water troughs and notify appropriate alerts to them when the level of water has breached the lower threshold mark.
Since the graze area is spread across hectares of land, it was necessary to have long range communication systems. We identified LoRa protocol as the required one and the data would be passed to the web server via an industrial gateway. LoRa is used mainly for long range communications in IoT applications and the gateway was developed for the client using custom components. Push notifications were implemented for alerting the users regarding the water level dip. Client also wanted to view the data in a hand held device, so an android mobile app was built for the same.
Call us to know more about our industrial automation success stories, and ready to deploy wireless monitoring sensor solutions.