Distence participated in the Resource Waste Management (RWM) trade show in Birmingham UK from 13th to 15th of September. Parallel to the main event there were additional events on Energy, Water and Renewables sectors. This was the first time for Distence at the show and we were part of Finpro’s stand together with five other Finnish cleantech and IoT related technology and service providers. It was a great opportunity to get an overview of the waste management sector along with its machinery, equipment and service needs and offerings.
During the show we captured few key themes, one being the increased focus on recycling and waste to energy type of technologies and solutions and the second being waste collection optimization. Naturally we were seeking for business opportunities for Distence’s solutions in these themes. Just by looking at the machinery such as compactors and balers in the waste management value chain, there were versions with very low level of automation to sophisticated and fully automated units.
In many of the solutions, however, no remote monitoring or management functionality was implemented. With Distence’s intelligent edge computing and cloud solution, remote monitoring of fill level, hydraulic pressures and error messages can be implemented, just to mention a few parameters. This could be further expanded to localized automated actions or remote control of key parameters to enable automation, at a decent cost level, in lower end machinery from the warmth and coziness of an office. According to our discussions with several waste machinery makers, just by reducing the visits for on-site service could bring hundreds of pounds of savings per machine on a yearly level. This may not sound a lot, but with hundreds or even thousands of e.g. compactors in the field, it adds up to significant savings. All this in addition to the avoidance of unscheduled downtime in the use of the asset. Further more the possibility for manufacturers to collect information on the use of their product to take back to product development, sales and quality departments, increases the number of information users and the ROI from the investment. For mobile machinery the information, made available thru the solution’s fill level information together with GPS location data, can easily be used for waste collection route optimization for increased efficiency and cost savings.
The edge computing technology and remote management solutions are ready. It is now up to the businesses and operations to capitalize on this available competitive advantage.
More information about Distence and the applications at www.distence.fi or Kalle Nurminen (+358 40 538 2216).