Real-time Visibility of Energy & Utilities for a Global Beverage Manufacturing Company
Data every 60 seconds
Multi-site deployment
Gaining visibility of gas, water and energy data was a top priority for one of our global beverage manufacturing clients. Bottling lines, filtration rooms and heating systems were the core industrial assets that required cloud connectivity, with an over-arching vision to support the organisations sustainability goals.
Becoming net-zero, reducing wastewater, and cutting carbon emissions by 50% were some of the sustainability goals the company wanted to achieve, with help from our team of industrial IoT specialists.
Aside from sustainability-related objectives, the company were struggling to take meter readings due to the type of metering in place. This manual process meant they had less time to focus on other key objectives. Additionally, without clear insight of their water consumption, the company were unable to verify the accuracy of their water utility bills. The Hark Platform provided an answer to each of these challenges.
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Creating Connectivity for Bottling Lines, Water Filtration Rooms, and Rooftop Heating Systems
After early discussions and site visits, we created a roadmap with the client to enable connectivity in the core areas of their facility. Other work packages included a licence to the Hark platform, professional services / technical consultancy, and enterprise technical support. Initially this would be applied to three core use-cases:
- Bottling Line Connectivity:
The existing meters for the bottling lines had insufficient connectivity options (Gen 1 ND Meters). Hark proposed replacing the existing metering with updated hardware to allow external devices to take digital energy readings. Following the completion of the refit, we now provide real-time data at 1-minute intervals such as: Consumption (kWh), Instantaneous Power (kW). To communicate this data to the cloud, we installed a 4G-enabled Hark Gateway (that powers the Hark Connect software).
- Filtration Room Connectivity:
The client had water metering in place for their main water incomer, however much like the bottling line meters, connectivity options were insufficient. To get around this, we recommended the client to upgrade to a LoRaWAN Pulse Meter. With this, we could connect to the discharge centre of the filtration room and provide real-time consumption and flow data at 15-minute intervals. Hark set up a LoRaWAN Network and LoRaWAN Gateways to provide site-wide wireless connectivity for water meters and other gas and utility meters.
- Rooftop Gas and Electricity Heating Systems Monitoring:
The production facility housed a number of heating units on the roof. In order to give the client gas and electricity data for the heating units, we needed to install metering equipment. This required new Gas meters and wireless LoRaWAN Pulse meters to monitor consumption & flow.
LoRaWAN Network and Gateway Security
Authentication and encryption are mandatory with LoRaWAN solutions, while the Hark Connect product itself is extremely secure as well. All data streamed from the Hark Connect software is encrypted over the wire using TLS (the industry standard for transport layer security), with deployments using independent security encryption keys. This creates a layer of safety and security for our clients.
Key Features and Services
Our client needed access to Hark’s core features and services to empower them to make fundamental business changes that support their sustainability and performance goals.
It is important for the business to have multiple users on the Platform, with custom dashboards (and dashboard templates) available to them. This meant that each user could get access to the information they needed quickly and create their own dashboards to help them in their day-to-day operations. The Platform also allows dashboards to be shared between users, which was important.
Having access to historic data allowed them to cross analyse from previous months to understand whether key performance indicators towards their sustainability goals were being met.
Events alerts by severity and tags were another key feature that allowed the company to proactively maintain assets, by alerting engineers when performance or consumption thresholds were crossed. Tags could be used to inform the user about the type and severity of an issue, this would add context to how quickly an engineer needed to investigate. i.e. (KILLOWATTS / SEVERITY 5).
Key Outcomes
What were outcomes of the project and how did it benefit the client?
Energy and utility savings ⚡️
Able to accurately view water consumption to dispute with utility providers and make savings. As well as energy savings through efficiency and improved performance.
Access to key insights 🔎
Whether for reporting, for regulation or for making improvements to processes, having access to valuable data insights is an important outcome for the business.
Industry 4.0 future-proofing 🤖
With the transition toward smart factories and facilities, the integration of cloud-connected smart systems has allowed the company to be a step ahead and ready for a digital-first future.
Reduced hardware or replacements 🔧
Having accurate insight into the health of an asset gives the company enough insight to know when an asset truly needs replacing or when it simply needs repairing. This results in a reduced need for additional hardware and helps save on costs.
Reduced callouts and unnecessary maintenance 🛠
With predictive maintenance empowered by our Events and Alerting features, the company can vastly reduce maintenance costs and plan callouts more efficiently by using real-time data or forecasting features.
Improved Performance Through Continual Optimisation 🔋
With the facility running with higher efficiency, and more assets performing at their peak, the business can further maximise yield.
Want to Connect Your Assets?
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