Industry currently faces a high degree of operational complexity, making it difficult to increase efficiency. Manufacturing technology, for the most part, has not advanced at the same pace as consumer and business systems. And reducing labor costs is no longer a differentiating factor. Therefore, improving performance and existing business models, as well as increasing agility in keeping pace with emerging technologies, is essential.
New market demands, regulations, competition, and other factors create a challenging and uncertain environment. Therefore, companies need flexibility and flexibility to remain competitive.
Traditional systems responsible for management and monitoring do not have an architecture that allows for rapid and dynamic changes, much less one that can anticipate and notify failure events predictively and proactively.
Another important aspect is connectivity with a variety of equipment. To achieve operational efficiency, it's necessary to converge all readings from any existing subsystem into a single application, providing a global view of the operation.
The latter entails connectivity with various types of protocols. An IIoT solution cannot be limited to a select number of protocols, much less to the currently most widely used groups of protocols. It is necessary to connect legacy equipment and systems, ensuring interoperability and convergence on a single platform with the past, present, and future.
When Above-Net began developing Bridgemeter in 2014, it recognized this market desire and requirement and built a solid, modular, layered architecture that allows for full equipment interoperability.
In addition to connectivity options and transmission methods (Cellular, LoRa, NB-IoT, Wi-Fi, etc.), the platform currently offers over 140 protocols that allow for the Plug and Play concept of any device or sensor, even legacy ones. With such flexibility, it's possible to undergo a gradual digital transformation process with costs tailored to the client's investment needs.
Once the information is collected, all data is stored in a structured manner, allowing for horizontal interconnection with several other market tools for specific data analysis.
Another challenge identified by Above-Net in 2014 was the ability to anticipate failures and communicate events to users in such extensive equipment parks. The current control center model is impractical and inefficient because it diverts attention to events that function correctly 90% of the time. The challenge is to ensure critical information is not lost or fails to be transmitted as quickly as possible to the team responsible for any change in reading, regardless of the size of the monitored infrastructure.
Bridgemeter uses modern real-time notification techniques that ensure proactive information delivery. This means that even if an operator is on a coffee break or their control center panel is out of equipment, the system automatically identifies the issue and notifies everyone involved with an action plan.
In fact, Bridgemeter customers notice substantial time savings compared to the same process before using the solution. In these cases, maintenance teams can respond even before the call center is notified or the installed control center detects the issue. This results in operational savings, time savings, and a direct increase in customer satisfaction.
This notification process is triggered by an automated task manager that monitors the progress step by step until the situation is normalized. The team has access to an online document repository integrated with the system to consult manuals, blueprints, certifications, images, or any other documents that are important for verifying and completing the task. This provides further savings through practicality, centralized information, and increased efficiency in the execution of maintenance services.
Another important aspect of the product design was the understanding that Bridgemeter isn't a competitor to SCADA systems, but rather a component that adds flexibility and intelligence to remote monitoring. Bridgemeter can operate alone or in conjunction with existing SCADA systems. The latter option also solves several connection issues encountered in the market, including the need for multiple PLC connections or multiple SCADA systems. Once again, flexibility and intelligence combine to increase efficiency.
For example, using Bridgemeter, Above-Net integrates several devices and stations belonging to a large sanitation company, enabling remote control and telemetry, as well as reliable communication with the client's SCADA system. Above-Net was the only company able to overcome vulnerabilities and lack of standardization in local communication, delivering a reliable, highly available, and cost-effective solution.
Above-Net also understood from the outset that an IIoT platform is just one component of a digital transformation process and, to achieve this, it would need to interoperate with other systems, ensuring information continuity for a 100% digital process completion. Therefore, Bridgemeter offers a range of communication options with ERP and management systems, whether through APIs or other integration methods.
Another important factor has always been usability. Traditional monitoring systems have multiple menus, complicated operation, and a learning curve that requires constant training and a specialized programming team. In the medium and long term, this becomes unsustainable because it's an activity outside the company's core business, as it lacks specialized programming personnel or the ability to create a solution on its own. As a result, the change process is extremely bureaucratic and expensive.
Bridgemeter's intuitive interface allows for instant configuration of supervisory diagrams, alarms, and smart rules according to the user's authority, allowing for immediate updates to triggers and decision support actions. Greater flexibility and agility for increased 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, its updates and maintenance.
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