Tech

Temperature Monitoring and Vaccines

Temperature-Monitoring and Vaccines

Vaccines are the need of the hour today in a world that is teetering under the coronavirus pandemic.
Indeed, the race to develop, distribute and administer vaccinations around the globe is currently
progressing at a lightning pace, especially when the possibility to prevent further deaths, revive dying
economies, and reclaim normal lifestyles hang in the balance. However, their success mainly depends on
proper storage and handling. Here is where temperature-monitoring comes into place.

What is temperature-monitoring and why is it important for the storage of vaccines?

Temperature-monitoring systems capture temperature data of an area via a probe or sensor. Vaccines
are fragile and must be stored properly from the time they are manufactured until the time they are
administered in a certain temperature range which varies according to their type. Exposure to
temperature fluctuations or multiple temperature excursions can damage the vaccines and adversely
affect their potency, resulting in huge financial losses and the risk of patient contamination. To safeguard
them and ensure their safe delivery, a robust temperature-monitoring system is an absolute
requirement.

Why is it a huge challenge?

If we take the current Covid-19 pandemic into account, the scale of vaccine distribution itself is one of
the enormous proportions – companies will not only have to make millions of doses but also maintain them
at regulated cold temperatures all through their journeys from the factory to hospitals to drug distribution
centers. A decade ago, temperature-monitoring of vaccines was done manually, a time-consuming
the process with a high risk of error especially when one would need to open the storage unit for a
temperature check and inevitably alter the integrity of the vaccine inside. But with today’s technological
advancements, this challenge can be mitigated through several innovative ways including the internet-
connected temperature-monitoring systems.

What is the advantage of IoT temperature-monitoring sensors?

Automated IoT sensors can sit inside a freezer or a transport unit and continuously monitor the
temperature, negating the need to physically open the unit for a check.
The temperature data can be continuously transmitted to pharmaceutical companies and storage
handlers, allowing them to make note of any event that compromises the integrity of the
product and instantly make corrections from afar.

The temperature records can be backed-up and downloaded for posterity, available at a click of
a button, thereby doing away with the traditional pen, paper, and clipboard method, saving a
a whole lot of time.

IoT temperature-monitoring systems are no doubt a goldmine for meeting the current challenges of
efficient vaccine distribution and will only continue to expand its industry as more and more vaccines get
developed in the future.

Thingstel’s next-generation temperature sensors with increased intelligence, reliability, and improved
accuracy specifications are easy-to-use and come fully-calibrated with a temperature-compensated
digital output. You can always reach out to us in case you have any questions or simply want to know
more!

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Insect Farming

Insect Farming

Insect farming is an admittedly old, but attractive business opportunity given the current issues of food insecurity and unsustainability. And we know how to make it even better.

What is insect farming?

Insect farming is the processes involved in the production of commodities from insects, which includes the rearing and breeding of insects, much like livestock because of which it is also called as “mini livestock” or “micro livestock”.This has proven to be an eco-friendly and sustainable practice with various long term benefits!

Benefits of insect farming

In the ongoing pandemic, topics of Climate change, food security and sustainability are becoming issues of increasing concern and insect farming promises a solution to some of it.

Economic benefits

Compared to livestock, insect rearing has several advantages. Firstly they require less land, with a larger number of insects being able to fit in the space compared to traditional livestock. Secondly, they require less water and feed compared to traditional livestock since some insect varieties take the water they require directly from the feed. Some even consume agricultural and food waste or culinary by-products, creating an environmentally effective cycle of income.

Sustainable

Insect farming is also considered to be more environmentally friendly than livestock which is considered to be the second-largest producer of greenhouse gases and one of the leading causes of anthropogenic-induced climate change. Insects are even advocated as a major sustainable food source for the future by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.

Food security & nutritionally efficiency

With a growing world population, increasingly demanding consumers, and a limited amount of agricultural land, there is an urgent need to find alternatives to traditional meat products and alternative protein sources and Insects have risen as a viable alternative! Insects Also have a better nutrition profile than conventional livestock. They contain proteins, lipids, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, carbohydrates and vitamins, with significant levels of micronutrients such as copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, zinc and so on.

What are the challenges?

Insect farming is usually labour intensive.

The main challenge involves the intensive insect rearing itself. A fair balance between mechanization, automation, and manual labour must be found but most of the insect farming methods utilized now are labour-intensive. Only a few stages are automated, which makes huge staff necessary when scaling up.

Insect farming requires constant monitoring.

Insect farming requires close monitoring of temperature and other critical parameters for efficient control and maintenance which requires increased manpower and work times.  

This is where Thingstel comes in! 

Thingstel helps overcome certain challenges, reducing manual labour, thus the risk of human error with smooth, and cost-efficient automation tools like its wide range of sensors, such as temperature sensor, Humidity sensor, light sensor and pressure sensor are valuable for the process through which valuable input can be obtained. Thingstel also provides predictive maintenance and real-time monitoring for effective and efficient Insect farming.

We are pros when it comes to assisting Black soldier fly farming. Black soldier flies could potentially redefine the future of many industries being among the fastest detritus feeders: they obtain their food by consuming decomposing plant and animal parts and are valued for their ability to break down decaying or dead materials extremely fast.

They thus help recycle nutrients and even aid the Earth’s biogeochemical and energy flow cycles. 

Bottom line

Global food and feed are growing rapidly while agriculture land is decreasing and livestock expansions are showing adverse long-term implications for the environment. Hence in the current scenario, insect farming appears as an increasingly attractive response to the need of sustainable food and feed production as Insects represent an abundant food source that can be reared using organic side-streams, thus enhancing circularity and sustainability, while alleviating food insecurity.

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Data-driven decision Making and Data Analytics

Data-driven decision Making and Data Analytics

The upcoming Knowledge-based economy—which Investopedia defines as an economy where education and knowledge or “human capital,” serves as the productive asset— is led by Data analytics and data-driven insights and decision making.

What is Data-driven Decision Making and Data Analytics?

Data-driven Decision Making often abbreviated to DDDM, as implied by the name is simply about making decisions based on solid facts or hard data rather than approximation or intuition, that are based on flawed observations and lead to flawed decisions. And Data Analytics is simply the science of analyzing and interpreting this raw data so as to make these decisions. Several Data Analytics processes and techniques recently have been automated into algorithms that interpret raw data for human consumption.

Why is Data-driven Decision making and Data Analytics important?

Data analytics can reveal trends and metrics that would otherwise be lost in the mass of information. The overall efficiency of the business or system can also be increased by utilizing this data to optimize processes.

Improved consistency and continual growth. Data analytics and DDDM also help organizations create new business opportunities, produce actionable insights and, enabling them to become more adaptable.

However,

It can be time-consuming: Needless to mention, preparing these intensive data analytic reports for large scale organizations is extremely time-consuming.

Scope for Human error: There is an increased risk of human error. Misinterpretation of a single piece of information while preparing these manual data analytic reports can lead to a massive discrepancy in output.

The increased volume of data: Arguably the most important factor that makes preparing Data Analytics reports manually increasingly unfeasible is the increased volume, variety, and usability of the raw data available these days and the need to quickly generate decisions based on the data alone. And if there’s a better use for human capital, why choose otherwise?

What is the solution? 

Automation. Simple right? but you would be astonished at the number of organizations who neglect this. Thingstel and other similar enterprises who have pioneered Industry 4.0 have provided several effective and simple to use solutions! 

Thingstel’s automated, efficient, and easy to use systems like the Machine Centre, Thingstel Dashboard, Reports, Alert and Notifications system and, predictive maintenance systems are straightforward, effective and are known to increase an organization’s profitability and efficiency manifold. You can always reach out to us in case you have any questions or doubts or simply want to know more!

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Digitally Transforming Agriculture

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Digitally Transforming Agriculture

 A timeline of Agricultural Advancements

The changes brought about by Industry 4.0 has had an enormous impact on the agricultural sector as well, bringing about significant agricultural improvements with the Industry 4.0 technologies like IoT, AI and more. 

Agriculture has always been one of the world’s oldest most vital industries, and one that was drastically transformed in the most recent revolution called the Green revolution, with the introduction of high yielding crops. Recently the industry is undergoing another revolution – a digital one, that’s helping to reach the industry’s fullest economic potential.

Ignored by many is the fact that, like the industrial revolutions, the Agriculture Industry has been evolving too, often hand in hand with the industries. The advancements in Agriculture can be organized into 4 stages or revolutions per se:

The adoption of modern agriculture: Pre 1900s

The 18th century was a time of rapid innovation and experimentation. This was a time when farmers adopted efficient modern tools, developed scientifically backed methods of crop rotation, the timing of fallow, use of manure and more. This specialization of Agriculture leads to the urbanization and the industrial revolution that followed.

The post WW1 mechanization: 1920s

With the invention of the Internal Combustion engine, the world saw an increasing number of mechanized tools which consequently resulted in a generally increased farm productivity. The reduced reliance on manual labour and horse-drawn ploughs also meant extensive crop varieties emerged and a variety of new kinds of food were introduced in our diets.


The Green Revolution:1960s-1970

The 1960s saw the birth of biotechnologies and genetically modified agricultural products and an increased application of scientific development of strains and breeding of varieties of crops. This brought about the Green revolution, which upon introducing new, strong and high yielding crop varieties coupled with the widespread use of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers resulted in a tripped global grain output. The new technologies resulted in commercialization and corporatization of food production and agribusiness now went on a multinational scale.

The Digital Revolution (Present)

And finally, we come to the ongoing exciting digital revolution which has resulted in IoT assisted SMART farms with appliance relay controllers and environment monitoring which is slowly but surely transforming the agriculture industry as we know it.

How did it change? 

Traditional labour-intensive farms and farming methods are slowly giving way to SMART farming or precision farms which utilizes the latest technologies, introduced in Industry 4.0, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine learning (ML) Big Data, Analytics and more to make the process more efficient and productive, based on precise, sustainable and resource-efficient solutions.

The connected farm: Unlike in the past where each stage of farming and area of the farm was disconnected and to a certain extent left up to fate, SMART farms make use of sensors in every stage of the farming process and attached to farming equipment like light sensors, temperature sensors, humidity sensors and PH sensors to keep track of every move. These sensors will scan and collect data on the water, soil and the weather for environment monitoring, and the generated report will go to the farmer. 

SMART farming also involves drones, for imaging, planting crops and more. This helps give the farmer a much-desired bird’s eye view of the farm and help in real-time monitoring. This even involves reduced labour and increased productivity with Agribots or robots in agriculture which help in planting, repairing machinery and analyzing data. Thus the modern farm is an interconnected setup of sensors, drones, AI with a quick exchange of data and prompt action.

What now?

Despite the advancements, a lot of the world is still behind, due to lack of knowledge and a certain extent of mistrust in technology and we too, are still in the early stages of Digital revolution in agriculture. However the scope of improvement of efficiency and farm productivity is massive in the coming years and we, at Thingstel are only too happy to speak to and assist farmers to equip themselves with these most recent advancements as it happens, to reduce waste and improve their efficiency. You can also get in touch with us if you have any questions or doubts about this!

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Automation in Manufacturing

Automation in Manufacturing

What is Automation?

Automation or automatic control is commonly defined as the technology by which any procedure is carried out with minimal human intervention. It is simply the use of various control systems for operating machinery- be it industrial equipment or vehicles- with lesser human intervention than required before. The earliest example of Automation is considered to be the water frame, a spinning frame driven through water power, which though existed since ancient times in Egypt was patented and created for cotton production in 1771 by Richard Arkwright.

What Is Automation in manufacturing?

Industrial automation or automation used for industrial purposes began in the 2nd industrial revolution when the manufacturing industries went through a massive change going from using extensive labour for production to automated production lines.

Automation through the years

Industrial automation has been around for a long time and has been improved upon constantly with increasing advantages and different challenges.

Beginning of Automation: The 2nd industrial Revolution

Industrial automation began in the 2nd Industrial Revolution in 1870 which saw the utilization of electricity for the first time. After a few years, in 1913, Henry Ford famously used a moving assembly line to drastically reduce production time from 12 hours to about 90 minutes.

Automation in the 3rd Industrial Revolution:

The 3rd Industrial revolution began around 1950 with rapid technological advances in electronics, introducing technologies like computers,  memory-programmable controls and such.

The manufacturing industry was thus, revolutionized and through partial automation by the use of the mentioned technologies the production process underwent another significant change. And since the advent of these technologies, we are now able to automate an entire production process without human assistance. Examples of this are robots that perform programmed sequences without human intervention, that is RPA. These are used mainly and invaluable in some dangerous, or precise processes, that humans might be incapable of like Weilding, Machine feeding and so on.

Automation now: The 4th Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0)

Compared to the first industrial, second industrial and third industrial – which was the computer or information age–, the fourth industrial revolution is the digitization of automation. The current industrial revolution is building on already present technologies like World Wide Web, Cloud computing and computer and with advancements of technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence), IoT(Internet of Things) and Cloud Computing Machine learning we are currently undergoing a digital transformation.

 For example, Production systems that already have computer technology are expanded by a network connection and this is the next step in production automation. The networking of all systems leads to “cyber-physical production systems” and therefore smart factories, in which production systems, components and people communicate via a network and production is nearly autonomous where a few skilled people are required to monitor the ongoings.

This is the stage where Thingstel comes into the picture, providing end to end IoT solutions so one doesn’t have to worry about much and obtain a smart manufacturing process. Things tell also provides an interface with real-time monitories and analytics and more so the client can have all crucial data on one dashboard

Bottom line

Automation in manufacturing has been extremely rapid in its advancements and its alright if you feel overwhelmed. We are more than pleased to talk to anyone interested to know more and explain it.

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Predictive maintainance

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Predictive Maintenance and IoT

What is Predictive Maintenance?

Predictive maintenance in its basic premise is what the title implies, maintenance that seeks to predict and prevent issues that crop up in equipment care, rather than wait until there’s a problem that has already disrupted business operations

Therefore, Predictive maintenance is a technique which uses data analysis tools to evaluate the condition of equipment by performing periodic or continuous monitoring and detect anomalies or defects and fix them to prevent any loss or failure. Because predictive maintenance is only performed when equipment failure is imminent, it is more cost-effective than other common forms of maintenance like preventative or reactive This, like everything else in the manufacturing industry, has been revolutionized with the arrival of IoT.

How does it work?

Predictive Maintenance uses various kinds of old and real-time data from different parts of the operation to anticipate issues before they occur. Technologies like IoT, integrated systems and AI are transformative since they allow for syncing of people and different systems to work, share and study data together.

These technologies capture real-time data that is continuously updated, analyze it for any defect or irregularity and in this way monitor every part of the operation carefully. Some examples of using predictive maintenance and predictive maintenance sensors include oil analysis, vibration analysis, thermal imaging, and equipment observation.

What are the Advantages of Predictive Maintenance?

Predictive Maintenance has the following advantages

Reduced Maintenance Cost by 12%

Maintenance, unexpected downtime, interrupted operations and other associated costs for assets increase up the cost significantly. Therefore, companies can save money by being able to predict and avoid equipment failure.

Extended ageing asset’s life by 20%

With the help of IoT based preventive maintenance, you can schedule maintenance, repairs and predict events before they occur, and get real-time alerts that help you take prompt action, thereby extending the life of your assets.

Uptime improved by 9%

Adopting IoT based predictive maintenance can help avoid unplanned downtime caused by machine repairs and delays. IoT based predictive maintenance can help analyze data, predict issues and schedule maintenance and inspection routine to avoid unnecessary effort and increase operation efficacy and uptime manifold.

Reduce Safety, health environmental and quality risks by 14%

IoT based Predictive Maintenance analyzes data from multiple sources, both internal and external sources. This can be used to identify potentially hazardous conditions and estimate its impact on working conditions.

Increased efficiency

Predictive maintenance allows a holistic view of asset health which help organizes plan, prioritize and schedule work. Machine failure and unplanned downtime often result in work relocation, hiring extra personnel, rescheduling and so on. This can be avoided with IoT based predictive maintenance, which helps the efficacy of service crew and reduces asset downtime.

What are the Disadvantages of Predictive Maintenance?

The higher upfront cost:

It’ll cost you a significant amount to establish a complete IoT system with sensors, transmission costs and analysis. Thought the initial investment is high, the results make up for it.

Requires skilful Data interpretation:

Adopting IoT based Predictive Maintenance requires skilled labour who can handle the technology and analyze as well as interpret the data collected from the tools.

In conclusion

IoT based predictive maintenance is an important advancement which enables us to truly unleash the extensive potential of the Internet Of Things. This can as said above improve the efficiency of operations, reduce failures and increase cost-effectiveness by manifold. Despite its disadvantages, IoT based predictive maintenance is a rewarding and smart investment.

Thingstel provides you end to end IoT solutions integrating the latest innovations in Network Technologies, Cloud Computing, Big Data, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence. We also offer you data-driven decision support which in turn increases productivity and lowers cost. We are excited to be a part of the 4th industrial revolution or Industry 4.0 and we welcome you to join us.

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IoT Trends of 2022

A lot of businesses have benefited from the efficiency that IoT brings. IoT has made a lot of operations across industries extremely easy to access,

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