Due to doubled data traffic demand, Telstra wanted a solution that can meet insatiable high-speed mobile broadband demand and secure a smooth network migration while re-farming spectrum.

Rennicks’ solutions experienced issues with communications in Scotland, where poor network coverage in remote locations was causing problems for some of its Variable Message Signs (VMS). Loss of connectivity meant more site visits had to be made to manually adjust signs, which was proving to be costly while the root cause of the problem was not being addressed.

Varian has a variety of medical instruments and cancer treatment systems that support today’s leading-edge treatment modalities with Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) and Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT). These treatment systems are deployed at more than 1,000 hospitals and clinics worldwide. Traditionally, system and equipment problems have required one or more service technicians to diagnose and resolve issues at the hospital site, resulting in higher costs and lost patient treatment time. For a typical treatment device, the loss of one day’s treatment time can result in 35 patients missing their treatments, which is something hospitals and patients cannot afford. Problem resolution can be complicated if incorrect or incomplete information has been provided by the operator, and also in cases where the problem cannot be recreated once the technician is on site. Operators of the Varian Acuity™ imaging system, an integrated simulator and verification tool for testing patient treatment plans, occasionally require expert assistance. Image quality optimization, solving operational problems, and tuning system performance can cost time and money for Varian and their customers.

Backing up and monitoring of Industrial control system programs for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva, the world´s largest particle accelerator, has been entrusted to the data management system versiondog. The European Organization for Nuclear Research uses the system to manage the data of around 500 components, making versiondog one of CERN's standard technologies.

As a large distributed system scales, the ability to simultaneously maintain or enhance performance and reliability creates its own set of unique challenges. How do you address the distributed future, ensure you learn from your past experiences and build on the investments customers have already made? The challenges are real, and in the process of overcoming them BK Medical is building healthcare systems that are more cost effective, and provide greater integration into the patient care systems to facilitate improved decision making for doctors.

“For us to maintain low costs and high customer satisfaction while providing improved response times, we need a better, faster way to resolve issues beyond dispatching onsite technicians,” explains Mark Hessinger, Executive Director of Worldwide Service at Gerber Scientific. Gerber faces a continuous need to train new personnel as they are brought into the service organization. A change in strategy for service allows Gerber to build a stronger technical support organization and a more efficient process to bring new field service engineers up to speed. “We have a lot of tenured employees in North America and Europe,” observes Hessinger. “In seven years, the loss of man years will accelerate, so we need to retain product knowledge before it becomes a greater issue and impacts our customers.” Hessinger and his team realized that they needed a solution to remotely connect to their products and identify, diagnose, and resolve issues. Ideally this would happen before their customers even become aware of a problem, reducing the dispatch of onsite technicians or improving first-time fix rates when onsite visits are required. By collecting data from their products deployed in production, the company could begin addressing the aging workforce issue by capturing and retaining information. Collecting information on consumables and parts could automate consumable resupply, optimize spare parts inventory, and enable Gerber to provide true preventive maintenance. “We do not have mean time between failure data because we don’t know how many hours our customers are actually using our products,” says Hessinger. “Some customers use our products a few hours a day, while others use them 24/7. Obtaining actual usage data will help us better plan our spare parts and the consumables required for run times.” Other capabilities identified to help build a business case for their initiative included minimizing product downtime, automating software patch distribution, offering value-added services, providing engineering with product usage data, and delivering remote training on product capabilities for distributors and new technicians.

To achieve global leadership, Dongyang E&P needed to improve collaboration between product development teams. The company already had a product lifecycle management (PLM) system in place, yet it needed a platform that would facilitate collaboration and improve problem detection before going to mass production.

A medical product company needed to install 230 thin client PCs across four manufacturing plants. Thin clients have been used in offices for many years, but their introduction onto the factory floor has been slow. A thin client network consists of a management computer in a secure, air-conditioned room with back up UPS, whilst on the factory floor there are a number of simple computers which are used to connect to the management computer, thereby removing the need to install individual operating systems and applications on each of the clients whilst also ensuing that there is only one point of failure.The company was looking for a network architecture that would have the lowest maintenance costs and the quickest deployment time. To meet all these needs, each of these sites would have approximately 50 thin clients installed on the factory floor and these would then be connected to a central server located elsewhere on the site. This leaves only one point of maintenance for software updates, security patches and rules for what applications are allowed to run on the thin clients.

As TransCanada's GE turbines were nearing end of life at their Ravenswood and Alberta locations, they required cleaner, more viable solutions to meet the growing power demands of their constituency, with the Ravenswood location serving over 20% of New York City.

CenturyLink wanted to accelerate design and delivery of IP-based enterprise services, drive all processes from a central catalog for improved service agility and position CenturyLink for SDN/NFV with an open, standards-based solution.

Taking advantage of the fast growth of China and the growing demands in embedded computer systems, Vantron technology was established in 2002 by Silicon Valley professionals and headquartered in Chengdu, China. In addition to readyto-run low-power embedded systems, Vantron also provides assistance in application software development, tailoring its embedded systems based on customers’ requirements, and offering turn-key manufacturing services. With customers in industries such as healthcare, heavy equipment, vehicle tracking and telematics, looking for customized solutions, Vantron saw more and more customers looking for interconnectivity through the cloud so that they could access and interact with their equipment remotely

Algae Lab Systems contacted B-Scada when a customer of theirs was looking for a way to aggregate data from several hundred AlgaeConnect™ systems, each with several photobioreactors/ponds, in a single system. The AlgaeConnect™ system allows for monitoring and controlling of the equipment in clusters of reactors, as well as logging and graphing data, along with some other functions, but still lacked the ability to integrate the data from multiple AlgaeConnect™ deployments through a single interface with the custom graphics they desired. Therefore, the customer wanted a centralized interface through which to access their data, and they wanted it to be composed of graphics they chose.

Contextual and background data is often buried and in various formats; Storage and distribution of large amounts of raw data requires considerable compute resources and infrastructure; The cost of installation and maintenance of new computers, servers, and network equipment to collect and distribute data needs to be minimized. GOAL Establish new open environments for future factory operation visualization scenarios, with data upload and simulation capability to augment physical factory equipment; Provide a cloud-based platform that can combine factory sensor and operational data to enhance the visibility and analysis of key manufacturing processes, thereby enabling improvement of operational efficiency.

The custo med medical platform's diagnostic function consists of different software packages and devices in order to acquire the ECG, blood pressure profiles, and lung function data from patients. The products are integrated in clinical IT networks and need therefore to offer full modularity and scalability in terms of performance and usability. Furthermore, medical regulations require the after sales traceability and a protection against technological manipulation of the products.

Recent studies have found that patients return to the hospital at an alarmingly high rate among those who are hospitalized for heart failure, almost one in four are re-hospitalized within 30 days. Such a focus has led to novel approaches to improve patient care and reduce the need for re-hospitalization. Many of these strategies depend on technologies that employ remote patient monitoring (RPM), using the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing, so that their health care team can track their progress without needing them to come to the office. At the Hochschule Furtwangen University (HFU) in Germany, students across multiple disciplines are working to develop this RPM technology into mechanical devices to aid in monitoring patients remotely. Their idea is to utilize the Internet of Things to develop “smart” wheelchairs and walkers that will transmit patient information to a dashboard developed in PTC’s ThingWorx to monitor various parameters and develop alarms specific to each patient. Achim Bumüller, Senior Assistant in the Mechanical and Medical Engineering Department, is managing the project along with five other faculty members dedicated to each discipline such as electronics, informatics, and mechanical engineering. “Since our university is located in the Black Forest of Germany in Baden-Württemberg, the project was originally developed due to the need for remote monitoring in the small villages that are 20-30 kilometers from their nearest doctor or hospital; however, the target has grown to include the necessity of monitoring patients inside a hospital, nursing home or other areas,” states Bumüller.

Global energy leader ENGIE is implementing an ambitious digital transformation strategy that is vital to the Fortune Global 500 company’s plan to confront the major challenges posed by climate change and promote people’s access to reliable, innovative, socially responsible, low carbon, and decentralized energy. To do this, ENGIE plans to invest €1.5 billion in new businesses and digital over the next three years.

Canon wanted to build an infrastructure to enable IoT system to process large amounts of data received from more than 1 million multifunction printers, and support 2x anticipated growth in the number of printers connected to the IoT, and ensure migration to the IoT platform to minimize disruption to global office-products business operations, and deploy a easy-to-manage disaster recovery system to reduce the switchover time in the IoT environment.

Vipoll aims to consolidate its market position and break into new markets not only in Slovenia but also internationally. A brewing customer needed to access the entire data from a production line. It was necessary to visualize the whole line and also to collect all its data, record that data transparently and make the data available to business users. The main focus was to grab data according to Weihenstephan standards. The Weihenstephan standards define which production data should be recorded at a filling plant and specifies how that data should be transferred.

Vending operators constantly monitor their machines, restock merchandise, check for problems, perform maintenance and repairs, and try their best to estimate and forecast sales based on limited information. To make the vending business profitable, operators look for ways to reduce costs and increase margins.

Kospo needed a way to provide a higher reserve margin. Given the rise in demand due to a positive economic environment, Kospo looked to upgrade their fleet of 7F gas turbines to provide additional capacity while controlling emissions.

Veolia supply water treatment equipment and services to a range of industries. It serves customers in the pharmaceutical industry, food and beverage, chemical processing, power, research and healthcare. Customers in these industries rely on water treatment to keep their businesses operating efficiently, as any decline in the quality of water in those processes means increased cost.Veolia wanted to use the latest technology that the internet makes possible to create a better experience for its customers in the countries across Europe. It wanted to give it customers instant access to their service scheduled, service reports, documentation, orders, contract coverage, and live feeds of data from their Veolia equipment, all while putting Veolia's support support team just a click away.

An Advanced Design Project toward IoT was open to a handful ofundergraduate students in TU Darmstadt from various backgrounds. The team’s goal was to develop an IoT solution by semester’s end.Based on their personal experience and the survey results—which told them 85% of people had forgotten to pack something important on a trip—they decided to apply the IoT to the world of travel. Armed with ThingWorx and PTC University eLearning Libraries, they began to develop the project idea and scope.

Few areas draw as much attention, time, and budget scrutiny as the network of thousands of street lights deployed in every urban environment. From safety concerns arising from broken bulbs to escalating energy costs and maintenance headaches, street lights are a hot-button issue for government administrators, law enforcement personnel, and, of course, constituents. Furthermore, Cities are increasingly handing-over street lighting operations to external partners under a determined Service Level Agreement, which performance is appraised using Key Performance Indicators that have to be measured and recorded. Aiming to turn this challenge into opportunity, Enlight – a name that underscores the company’s commitment to energy and lighting solutions – has devoted its business to developing and producing smart networks of street lights in urban environments – from streets and avenues to parks, playgrounds, and plazas. According to Miguel Lira, general manager for Enlight, new technologies continue to evolve and municipalities want to do more than turn lights on and off. They want full smart solutions for monitoring and controlling energy, and managing maintenance. “At first, we just provided basic services to manage street lights – just turning them on and off,” he said, “but as new technologies emerged, we were soon integrating hardware, software and finally producing smart lighting devices. But as the sophistication of these devices grew, so did our need for bandwidth to transmit more secure data at faster speeds and with greater reliability.” Previously, Enlight installations tapped into the actual electrical cable power the street lights as the communication channel. “At the time, RF communication was not reliable, stable, or well-developed,” Lira said, “but the powerline was noisy and not fully reliable.”

Travellers spend their lives discovering new places and meeting new people from all around the world. It can be such a wonderful experience, but sometimes it can turn into a disaster when your luggage gets lost. In 2014 alone, more than 24 million pieces of baggage were lost. Fortunately, 95% of them were found and returned to their owners. However, that leaves more than 1 million items of baggage that have never been recovered.

iRhythm was founded to provide patients an affordable alternative for monitoring heart rhythms, one that helps avoid the complexities, inefficiencies and lack of cost-effective monitoring options. With its single-use adhesive Zio Patch, an ECG rhythm monitor that can be used continuously for up-to-14 days, iRhythm has addressed key unmet clinical needs in the field of ambulatory cardiac monitoring. In order to keep pace with its rapid growth and limited resources, iRhythm required an efficient and effective way to monitor business processes, establish baseline performance across the entire operation and continue to track that performance to support the company's value-driven, high-volume business model.

The CONDIS supermarket chain needed to control reliably that its industrial refrigeration machines were operating correctly. At the same time the solution had to allow for manual testing of the level of refrigerant in the gas circuit when required, from the platform itself. This way they can act quickly in response to an alarm that the system itself should be capable of generating.

In order for the IoT to become fully operationalized, system integration of devices and data with existing businesses systems and processes is vital. In reality, many manufacturing companies like NectOne® with individual systems often find it very difficult to build and use intelligent structures between their systems. Many of the data sources as well as connected systems may be external to the business. This systems integration work can be complex and difficult to manage, but is vital to achieving business objectives. The final goal is to deliver cloud base production control.

One of the world's largest complex hardware manufacturers' business units, responsible for the post-product validation process, was looking to speed up its time to market and the time it took to identify and resolve process issues. Duplicate debugging hardware and software issues was eating up 70% of production time, slowing down time to market and costing money.

The utilities sector is characterized by myriad unconnected, legacy-based heterogeneous systems offered by several vendors that operate according to different standards (e.g. Ethernet, SCADA, OPC, ONVIF, MODBUS). Each system typically covers a particular area of activity (e.g. temperature, pressure, noise, alarm, access control), and is not integrated with the others. Due to this complexity, utilities management teams typically find it difficult to create a coherent, cross-organization situation picture, and to make operational decisions.

Honeywell Analytics established a customer service call centre which has ten call centre agents handling 1,500 calls per week.The agents were using a customer management software which was effective for capturing basic customer details, but inadequate for collating a service record for the customer's individual unit or linking to other company IT systems. An integrated system was needed to manage the process from initial customer call through to successful resolution such as the dispatch of a replacement or repaired product.