The industry currently has a high operational complexity that makes it difficult to increase efficiency. Manufacturing technology, for the most part, has not advanced at the same pace as consumer and business systems. And the reduction in labor costs is no longer a differentiating factor. Therefore, it is necessary and fundamental to improve performance and existing business model and greater agility in monitoring emerging technologies.
New market demands, regulations, competition, among others, create a challenging and uncertain scenario. Therefore, companies need flexibility and ease to remain competitive.
Traditional systems responsible for management and monitoring do not have an architecture that allows changes quickly and dynamically or much less that can anticipate and notify failure events in a predictive and proactive way.
Another important aspect is connectivity with a variety of equipment. To achieve operational efficiency, it is necessary to converge all readings from any existing subsystem in the same application, providing a global view of the operation.
The latter consequently brings connectivity with different types of protocols. An IIoT solution cannot be limited to a select number of protocols, much less to groups of protocols most used today. It is necessary to connect legacy equipment and systems, ensuring interoperability and convergence to the same platform with the past, present and future.
When Above-Net started developing Bridgemeter in 2014, it realized this market desire and requirement and built a solid modular layered architecture that allows full equipment interoperability.
In addition to connectivity options and transmission media (Cellular, LoRa, NB-IoT, WiFi...), today the platform offers more than 140 types of protocols that allow the Plug and Play concept to be applied to any equipment or sensor, even legacy ones. With so much flexibility, it is possible to go through a gradual process of digital transformation with costs adjusted to the client's investment reality.
After collecting the information, all data is stored in a structured way, allowing interconnection with several other market tools horizontally for specific data analysis.
Another difficulty identified by Above-Net in 2014 was the ability to anticipate failures and communicate to the user of events in such extensive equipment parks. The current control center model is impractical and inefficient as it disperses attention to events that 90% of the time work correctly. The challenge is not to lose or fail to transmit critical information as quickly as possible to the team responsible for a change in any reading, regardless of the size of the monitored infrastructure.
Bridgemeter uses modern real-time notification techniques that guarantee the delivery of information proactively. In other words, even if the operator is on a coffee break or his control center panel no longer contains equipment, the system automatically identifies and notifies everyone involved with an action plan.
In fact, Bridgemeter customers see substantial service time savings compared to the same process before using the solution. In these cases, maintenance teams are able to act even before the call center is called or noticed by the installed control center. Savings in operation, time and a direct increase in customer satisfaction.
This notification process is triggered with an automated task manager that controls the evolution step by step until the situation is normalized. The team has an online document repository integrated into the system to consult manuals, blueprints, certifications, images or any other document that is important for verifying and completing the task. Another saving with practicality, centralization of information and increased efficiency in the execution of maintenance services.
Another important point in designing the product was the understanding that Bridgemeter is not a competitor to SCADA systems, but rather a component that adds flexibility and intelligence to remote monitoring. Bridgemeter can work alone or in conjunction with already installed SCADA. The second option also solves several connection problems found on the market, including the need for multiple connections of PLCs or multiple SCADA systems. Once again, flexibility and intelligence combined to increase efficiency.
As an example, using Bridgemeter , Above-Net integrates various equipment and stations from a large sanitation company, allowing remote control and telemetry, as well as reliable communication with the client's SCADA system. Above-Net was the only one capable of overcoming barriers of fragility and lack of standardization in local communication, delivering a reliable, high-availability and excellent cost-benefit solution.
Above-Net also understood from the beginning that an IIoT platform is just one of the components of a digital transformation process and to achieve this, it would need to interoperate with other systems, guaranteeing the continuity of information to complete the process in a 100% digital way. Therefore, Bridgemeter has a series of communication options for ERP and management systems, whether through APIs or other forms of integration.
Another important factor has always been usability. Traditional monitoring systems have multiple menus, complicated operation and a learning curve that requires constant training and specialized programming staff. In the medium and long term, it becomes unsustainable as it is an activity outside the company's business focus that does not have personnel specialized in programming or ventures into creating a solution on its own. As a result, the change process is extremely bureaucratic and expensive.
Bridgemeter 's intuitive interface offers instantaneous configuration of supervision diagrams, alarms and intelligent rules according to the user's jurisdiction, allowing immediate updates on triggers and decision support actions. More flexibility and agility to increase efficiency.
Finally, Bridgemeter also contributes to minimizing investments, as it is offered in flexible packages as SaaS (solution as a service) with no development or license acquisition costs and can include all connectivity equipment, updates and maintenance.
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