Lagafors, based in Laholm in Sweden, is a leading manufacturer of cleaning machines for the food industry. Their largest solutions are called Central Cleaning Systems. In the central part of the system there are pumps, valves, water heaters, and containers for various additives. From this, water, foam detergents and disinfectants and more are distributed to an entire production facility through dedicated pipe systems.
Focus on traceability and cost-efficiency
For the users of Lagafors’s systems and consumables, hygiene in production is extremely important. To comply with regulations, they must track how different machines and surfaces have been cleaned and sterilized. Hygiene procedures often need to be traceable down to every batch produced. At the same time, customers don’t want excessive use of water, washing foam, and energy in their cleaning in concern for the environment and costs.
Cloud solutions nothing new under the sun
Lagafors has long developed its solution LogTrace System (LTS) for collecting data from their machines. The solution is based on hardware and cloud services from HMS Networks. Ewon Flexy is the physical gateway that collects and sends data to the cloud service Ewon Talk2M in a secure manner. The data is then extracted into the Connectitude IIoT Platform™ and transformed into digital twins of the cleaning systems.
Ewon Flexy is a modular hardware for relaying data from machines and sensors.
Lower risk in choosing turnkey solution
Since all necessary data is already streamed and stored in Talk2M, no new infrastructure or hardware was required on-site for Lagafors’s customers. The solution instead was that we built a secure and flexible API connection between our own and HMS Network’s cloud services. This means that all new, or already collected, data can be visualized, analyzed, and processed via the elaborate features of the Connectitude IIoT Platform™.
Easy to connect in a few minutes
It takes Lagafors just 2-minutes to connect and configure a new customer in the Connectitude IIoT Platform™.
Immediate effects
By relaying data to the Connectitude IIoT Platform™, Lagafors and their customers gain a completely new customer portal. In the portal each user role can create individual dashboards from a selection of included tools. In addition to more powerful alarm and real-time monitoring features, customers can now subscribe to ready-made reports with trends and comparisons between different shifts and production units. As a result of a better overview of the processes, customers have reduced their consumption of various resources, such as water consumption, by 10 – 40%.
Bonus effects for the staff
The need for training within the staff groups has become easier to identify. Also, many employees feel more involved in the company’s profitability when cleaning costs are presented and followed up.
The future requires even smarter machines
For Lagafors, this was also a big step towards their ambitions in Machine Learning and preventative maintenance. Product Manager, Martin Johansson sees the benefits of technology from a customer perspective if every machine can tell in advance when it needs a little care and tenderness.
“Our next step is to deploy more functions for Machine Learning. It will entail more accurate predictions for the planning of maintenance and repairs. This is important in avoiding costly production stoppages for our customers.”
Works directly on all existing installations
Since all necessary data is already streamed and stored in Talk2M, no new infrastructure or hardware was required on site at Lagafors customers. The solution was instead that we built a secure and flexible API connection between our own and HMS Network’s cloud services. This means that all new, or already, collected data can be visualized, analyzed and processed via the functions in the Connectitude IIoT Platform™.
Ewon Argos is a similar solution to Ewon Talk2M
HMS Networks also offers a cloud service called Ewon Argos. It is compatible with the Ewon Netbiter hardware. After the successful cloud-to-cloud integration for Ewon M2M, we developed one for Ewon Argos as well.
You can get started for free!
Do you already have, or are planning to get, Ewon Flexy or Netbiter as edge gateways for connecting your machines and sensors? Contact us or just create a free version of Connectitude IIoT Platform™ to experience the extra features you can add to your IIoT.
