Executive Summary
Forbo is a pioneer and leading manufacturing company in the production of Conveyor, processing belts, plastic modular belts, and high-efficiency flat belts supplied all over the world. Forbo Movement Systems specializes as competent partners in developing groundbreaking solutions in power transmission, conveying, and manufacturing sectors. The group has eight production facilities in Europe, Asia, and America, as well as warehouses and workshops in over 50 countries.
Biz4Intellia started working with Forbo in early August 2021, running a pilot project to monitor operations and connect their Legacy PLC-SCADA-based manufacturing system with the Biz4intellia IoT Powered Platform.
How Biz4Intellia's Smart Factory and Machine Monitoring Solution helped Forbo Group?
Biz4Intellia provided a LoRaWAN based IoT-powered Smart Factory and Machine Monitoring system, pre-configured and compatible with the client's legacy machinery, i.e., PLCs & SCADA systems implemented across different industry verticals. The provided systems can be configured for any industrial setup and empower facilities to improve conventional operations without hampering production.
Biz4Intellia Solution allowed Forbo to identify the key performing indicators, along with factors like uptime & downtime, operations of their assets, and how to optimize them to boost overall equipment effectiveness
The Challenge: Unplanned and Unnoticeable Machine Downtime
Establishing the Secured Legacy machine to Customize IoT hardware communication protocol implementation without hampering ongoing communication and Production.
Complete understanding of the Legacy machine with its various parameters.
Assemble all data points and publish them with the required parameters sourced from analog sensor data, digital sensor data, PLC data, etc.
Architecture of Implemented IoT System
Hardware Used
We used robust hardware devices with ethernet/ LoRaWAN gateway and Legacy machine to IoT connector (Sensor Node) for effective data collection and identifying the key performing indicators, factors like uptime & downtime, Date points, etc. The client obtained live readings and machine data from the Manufacturing plant and got quick data access through web and mobile platforms.
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Intellia Sensor Node/ Legacy machine to IoT connector
Intellia Sensor Node/ Legacy machine to IoT connector is a Multifunction Data Acquisition hardware that directly collects data from Legacy machines in analog or digital format via USB or RS485 and sends the collected data wirelessly via secured LoRaWAN Protocol to the Intellia Indoor LoRaWAN Gateway.
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Intellia Indoor LoRaWAN Gateway
Intellia Indoor LoRaWAN Gateway is an Industry 4.0 gateway that acts as the main central unit to instantly feed Collected data. The main task of the Gateway is to collect data from the sensor node, process that data in real-time, and stream data securely to the Biz4Intellia IoT platform using Wi-Fi, Ethernet & GSM (2G,3G & 4G) where the user’s dashboard further helps in advanced processing.
Protocol Used
LoRaWAN
LoRaWAN communication protocol was used to enable secure data transmission between the sensors and gateways. It is a wireless technology that shares the payload of small data packages ranging from 0.3 kbps to 5.5 kbps over long distances.
Biz4Intellia IoT platform
Biz4Intellia IoT platform ensures that all your data is gathered and processed in one centralized location so you can have secure and reliable remote access from anywhere in the world. Our Multi-tenant cloud platform leverages custom infrastructure uniquely optimized for machine data ingestion. This enables instant analytics and insights, including machine performance/ condition monitoring and reporting via APIs and BI integrations, to help improve your ability to make decisions based on real-time data.
IoT Platform Highlight
Leverage out-of-the-box Dashboard & mobile applications which drive immediate actionability, using real-time dashboards, historical reporting, rules-based workflows, and text/email notifications to Forbo Manager and Operators.
