Connected Cleaning Equipment Gets IoT Gateway Solution from LTTS

Client and Industry: LTTS’ (L&T Technology Services Limited) client is a global leader in manufacturing and supply of professional cleaning equipment.  The company’s product line consists mainly of industrial floor vacuum cleaners in three categories:

• Old: Equipment with an old design which was extensively used across the industry.  This product line has analog I/O ports to collect the data
• Current: Equipment with basic data intelligence.  These machines are equipped with serial port communication
• Advanced: New age equipment that is embedded with the CAN communication protocol

Client’s Requirement: The client wanted to connect these machines to a central system and track their parameters wirelessly.  Existing, off-the-shelf gateway solutions were too expensive and not always compatible with their machines.  Hence, they needed an IoT gateway solution that could enable wireless connectivity and work seamlessly across their product family.

LTTS has been developing wireless communication for products across various industries.  The company’s expertise and experience in consumer and home products, along with its IoT specific proprietary solutions, such as Avertle & UBIQWEISE, made LTTS the ideal partner for this project.

Challenges: The two main challenges were: the client had no solution that could enable IoT connectivity for the three categories of products, and this impacted the company’s customer experience and service costs.  The machines were not equipped with offline health tracking, and any wrong utilization resulted in increased warranty costs.  

LTTS’ Solution:  Leveraging its domain expertise and understanding of IoT gateway development, LTTS’  engineers designed and developed a radical new IoT gateway that altered the client’s operations management.

• End-to-end Product Development:  A Narrowband IoT gateway was designed and developed to enable machine connectivity.  The process involved the development of electronics, mechanical, firmware, and EOL testing.
• Compatibility:  The gateway can be enabled to work with cellular protocols of any location, globally.
• Tracking and Maintenance:  The gateway is equipped with various tracking sensors that enable predictive maintenance of the machines.  It also incorporates Bluetooth connectivity to check the machine internals without opening it up.  A secondary battery mechanism ensures tracking even when the machine is switched off.
• Data and Memory: LTTS enabled a configurable gateway whereby a user can configure and set the monitoring parameters, and determine the frequency of data transmission to the cloud.  This reduced the data overhead, and in turn, the cost.  The gateway also incorporated a memory module to store data in case of poor network connectivity.
• Compliance: LTTS leveraged its network of various testing labs to ensure that the gateway is compliant with global standards, such as FCC and CE.

Tangible Business Benefits: The newly designed IoT gateway enabled live tracking of the client’s equipment with constant health and location monitoring, and is 50 percent more cost effective than its off-the-shelf competition.  Integration of this gateway enabled predictive maintenance of the client’s machines, further adding to their cost savings.  The solution is also rated for IP65/56 compliance.