IoT Data Cockpit for Machine Manufacturers and Their Customers
Machine manufacturers are rich in data, because the sensors on the machines generate huge amounts of data. However, this data is not always sufficiently utilized. A global leader in textile machinery wanted to find additional business opportunities arising from the increase in sensor data (IoT) generated by its machines. In particular, this includes the following key elements: a functional toolset capable of meeting new customer requirements and an infrastructure that can process sensor data from machines in real time.
Textile machine manufacturer
The customer is an international top manufacturer of textile machines based in Switzerland. He is known as a trendsetter on the world market for his technologies and machines.
IoT data cockpit
The solution to this problem is an IoT data cockpit that brings the machines’ sensor data into the Microsoft cloud, where it is made available to those who need access to it. 1stQuad worked closely with the customer’s IoT integration partner and successfully solved specific customer challenges related to IoT integration, bringing the system to the cloud (Microsoft Azure) and developing dashboards and management pages. The power of these dashboards is evident at an early stage; they demonstrate the significant potential for efficiency gains.
The benefit of IoT data for manufacturer and customer
The customer builds modern textile machines that are equipped with various IoT sensors so that the measurement data can be centrally collected, processed and optimally evaluated by both the manufacturer and the customer.
In this way, the manufacturer can strengthen and expand customer relationships, improve its service, and at the same time continuously gain new insights into the use of its machines. The resulting optimizations, together with the added value of the service, bring competitive advantages and, not least, open up new areas of business. Thanks to the timely and accurate data, customers can increase efficiency and quality in production, optimize workflows, and reduce production errors and waste.
Big Data delivered to the customer with a perfect fit
1stQuad was commissioned by the customer’s integration partner to implement the IoT cockpit with various dashboards as well as management and configuration areas. The challenge for the team was to develop meaningful and performant aggregations and visualizations for the very large data volumes (Big Data). Since the solution makes data accessible to various customers via the cloud, the requirements for security in general and multi-client capability in particular were also very high.
State-of-the-art cloud technology delivers amazing insights
1stQuad implemented the customer cockpits with a web application based on ReactJS. This fetches data via a Microsoft Azure API, which in turn accesses data prepared with Azure Analytics. All access is protected, encrypted, data is stored separately for each customer and accessed as needed via a roles and permissions system. Dashboards are personalized and can be customized. Of course, the machine data can not only be filtered as desired, but can also be displayed in an expanded form via drill-down. In this way, amazing insights are possible, which the manufacturer and customers can use to make their machines even more efficient.
A digital business model and soon to be a standard?
The introduction of this IoT solution means not only more satisfied customers for the textile machine manufacturer, but also the opening of a new, digital business field. Because IoT data services and dashboards are more than just added value and a unique selling point. They are the cornerstone for digital payment services and thus a milestone in the digital (r)evolution for machine manufacturers. We expect such solutions to be the standard in the future and are pleased to have been able to be involved so early in the development phase.
