How clever implementation of Industrial Internet of Things (IioT) devices like the Zen IoT Gateway generated thousands of dollars and helped an industrial company to upscale.
EmissionGuard Inc provides a service to companies enabling them to comply with regulatory requirements for emmissions from Genset generators.
Their service comprises of:
Dispatching an engineer to install monitoring and logging hardware on-site
installing software on-site
providing ongoing support post-installation
Before the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
2 years ago EmissionGuard had over 100,000 customers. This meant during their growth period to achieve this number of customers, they regularly engaged a highly skilled (high level of knowledge) network of systems integrators and partners to travel the country to install 100,000 devices that were configured with 100,000 pieces of software (on various PCs with a myriad of different operating systems).
After installation the support helpline often dealt with unrelated customer issues like “I replaced my printer with a different brand and now it doesn’t work with your system” and “Windows 12 has heightened security and now won’t connect to your unit.”
A significant amount of support time was eaten up on these calls.
Business was going well but as EmissionGuard grew they needed more support engineers and required them to do more travelling to meet customer demand. Scalability was an issue.
A significant amount of support time was eaten up on these calls. Scalability was an issue.
How IIoT devices helped this business upscale
This year, thanks to it’s use of IoT enabled devices, things look very different for EmissionGuard.
Now when a customer places an order – no engineer is dispatched, just the product as the installation can be conducted by a regular household electrician.
The product is the IoT enabled G3 IoT Edge Controller.
After installation, the customer plugs the Modbus port into the GenSet, connects the additional sensors, applies power to the unit and walks away.
The unit automatically connects to the internet using a 4G modem. One which Verizon have guaranteed will work on their network for a minimum of 15 years.
The unit begins dumping data to a single server, the same server that all the other units are now connected to.
With this added load EmissionGuard occasionally have to update their server but this also has its benefits. In their last update they added a new feature which predicts catastrophic failure in the GenSet units. They offered this to their customers and the majority were happy to pay an additional charge for this peace of mind.
Scalable numbers after IoT implementation
EmissionGuard pay:
$4.00 per month to Verizon
$0.50 per month to Xively to run and maintain the Cloud application
EmissionGuard charge their customers
$11.00 per month for their standard service
$15.00 per month if customers opt for the additional catastrophic failure protection
How application of Industrial IoT kept profits in the business
EmissionGuard now have only 3 support engineers and no longer have to rely on their network of expensive systems integrators for installations. This staffing reduction alone has dramatically reduced their operating costs which has in turn improved profits.
EmissionGuard is looking forward to their next 100,000 installations and have found a new niche: replacing their competitors non-connected units.
How does the future of business look with the IoT?
By moving data to the Cloud your business can hand off the cost and responsibility of maintaining servers, security and backups to a Cloud service provider, freeing you to get on with the business of business.
Such has been the reduction in cost for these Cloud services that even heavy duty datalogging applications look set to move to dedicated servers on site to the Cloud.
As the IoT grows:
Cloud service costs will fall further
Your company’s issues associated with maintaining software and PC hardware will be greatly reduced
Your company will require less time and staff resource for new installations/expansions
Tech issues will be simpler to fix and less daunting
