Use IoT to Predict Failure

Echolo helps create solutions to monitor expensive capital assets and use that data to improve efficiency, drive better performance and enable innovation. Based on Microsoft Azure Internet of Things services, the solution collects, integrates, and organizes sensor data from remote equipment across global supply chains to support real-time insight, predictive analytics, and preventive maintenance.

We focus on delivering effective solutions that reduce cost and have a real ROI value. By using the latest in technologies Echolo is able to build custom IoT solution wrapped around your use case and business. We don’t force you to buy a “prebuild” non-configurable solution that causes changes in workflow or costly new training for your employees.  We integrate with your existing services or build new ones if that’s whats required.

We focus on delivering effective solutions that reduce cost and have a real ROI value.

The real value in IoT comes down to how you process and mine the millions of data points that come in monthly, weekly or even daily. Finding patterns in that data and being able to identify and bring that to someones attention is key.

See into the future by looking at the past

As your IoT solution is bringing in truckloads of data, you have to be able to look into it and do something with it or it’s 100% useless. Your IoT data should be stored in an accessible way, it should not just be archived and used for reactionary purposes. While the “trigger & action” model has a place and is very useful it’s not going to predict issue moving forward. Your months and years of data need to be analyzed daily to look for trends or patterns, these patterns can help you identify possible issues going forward. Looking back at our previous post about IoT in Food Transportation we are going to look at an example of a food delivery truck that may be having issues.

To start us off if you have not read our previous post, the Seafood transportation company built a custom solution using sensors that measure and report the following via cellular connection.

• Temperature: The seafood needs to be frozen to maintain its highest quality.
• Humidity: Important to avoid thawing of frozen seafood.
• GPS Location: To track the truck.
• Door Sensor: To alert the company if the truck door is opened.
• Human Presence Sensor: To check any human presence in the container of the truck.

They can embed temperature/humidity & motion sensors to the truck container, which collected and sent data to an IoT Hub (like Azure or AWS) for analysis. The sensors help track whether the temperature and humidity are under specified conditions, the container is traveling the specified route, the door is not opened during transit, or there is a human presence in the truck container. Once this sensor data is transmitted to an IoT hub it can be acted upon in real time, for example; If the door is opened before arriving at the final destination an alert can trigger sending an email, text, phone call or other to the appropriate people.

The use case is the ability to log and analyze days, weeks, or months of data to see if the truck may have a cooling or insulation issues. If the compressor is on to often and the external temperature is not extream it could indicate an issue. Often times the company was seeing food spoiled on a few select trucks. They are able to remotely monitor the cooling system on the truck and log all of its vitals like; coolant levels, system temperature, external temperature, and compressor run times. All of this data logged and saved in a remote database along with data of service request or actual service to the cooling system itself. Echolo is able to then build a system to automatically look for patterns in the mounds of data.

An example of this may be the compressor has been running for 2.5 mins or 8% more per cooling cycle and is on the rise by looking back over 6 weeks of data, the external or environmental temperature has not changed more than 3% over the past 2 weeks. The door open data shows that the driver has not been opening the door more or less than normal. We also see the last service on this cooling system was done 3 months ago and the fan or blower was changed due to a failure. This extra runtime costs the company an extra $670 per week and is growing at a rate of 1.2% every 7 days.

This type of reporting is key to being able to identify that this truck has an issue and that it is growing or trending up. An IoT enabled end-to-end solution will collect data from sensors, store it, analyze it, and visualize it. The insights we get from the data collected will help to improve the entire system and process, thereby improving the systems operations, transparency, profitability, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

How do you get started?

When companies look to secure outside help they tend to be more successful and reach the market faster.

Companies are often concerned that their employees lack IoT skills and knowledge, along with senior managers lacking knowledge of, and a commitment to, the required technologies to succeed with an IoT strategy. The Internet of Things is new and often a very nebulous idea. In fact, 70% of companies often look to outside consultants or IoT companies for help or try to learn from early movers in similar markets.

When companies look to secure outside help they tend to be more successful and reach the market faster. Consultants like Echolo have often seen the pitfalls and can help identify issues early because of the experience they already had with launching IoT based projects. Echolo can help build and deploy your custom IoT solution, come work with us!