IoT solution in an incredible scale: case story with a leading logistics company

Being innovative and testing new technologies is at the heart of creating a more sustainable future and offering the most reliable services for customers globally.

Our customer aims to be a forerunner in digitalizing their operations and making data-based decisions. This leading logistics and warehouse company has previously tested many different solutions for condition monitoring in their warehouses and found that connectivity and scalability were huge bottlenecks in IoT solutions. The company had been looking for a truly scalable IoT solution that would offer the best connectivity indoors and ended up talking with Haltian’s long-time partner, Wirepas. Wirepas introduced Haltian as a possible IoT provider and so the co-operation began to start piloting Haltian Thingsee IoT solution.

Although there were numerous use-case ideas, the ideal starting point was the warehouse pump rooms, which house the technology necessary to maintain and run the buildings. In particular, fire pumps and their backup engines require manual inspections to ensure their proper functioning and avoid water leakage.

The solution included a lot of Haltian’s existing offering, and some custom development was also done according to the customer’s specific needs. The development included new accessories to extend the leakage detection capability of our Thingsee LEAKAGE RUGGED device and a new extended battery life accessory, Thingsee POWERCOVER.

Read more about the custom development project in our whitepaper.

To make the delivery and installation process as easy as possible for the customer, Haltian developed the Smart Pump Room Kit: a customized, ready-to-use package of IoT sensors that can be easily installed in the pump rooms to collect data on the temperature, activity, possible water leaks, and people presence or visitor counting in the room.

The solution is designed to be easily scaled from thousands to tens of thousands of devices globally without any disturbances to the day-to-day operations of the customer. The devices are shipped to the customer directly from the Haltian factory in Finland pre-configured and ready for use, which means that they start sending data immediately after installation. Notably, the entire kit can be installed in a record-breaking 15 minutes, making it one of the fastest IoT solutions on the market.

With the Pump Room Kit, the customer can monitor the operation status of the building’s water systems remotely, helping them predict and prevent possible leaks and large building failures caused by water damage. The solution also helps to further the customer’s water conservation efforts.

The Haltian solution ensures that the environmental and operational conditions are on the correct level, lessening the need for in-person routine monitoring. The customer estimates that the solution saves the maintenance technicians about 6,5 hours of time every week and lowers the emissions from technicians traveling to various locations.

Right now, we have 3000 kits deployed in North America alone. This means over 30 000 IoT sensors and gateway devices are being delivered, pre-packaged and pre-configured for smooth installation and onboarding for each location. Future plans include expanding the monitoring to all the parts of the warehouses, monitoring e.g., the conditions, people presence, and door positions inside the warehouses, as well as the loading docks.