Helsinki, Finland – April 30, 2020 – Elisa Smart Factory, a leading industrial IoT and data analytics provider, is pleased to announce that it has successfully delivered the first proof of concept (PoC) of multi-vendor track and trace solution to Liebherr AG, a global manufacturer of construction machinery, in partnership with PTC and SAS at the European 4.0 Transformation Center (E4TC) in Aachen, Germany.

The PoC tackled a challenge very common in production: The lack of transparency on the position of different objects, e.g. material, products, infrastructure items in real-time, which is especially painful when these objects are not in their intended place. Even though there are plenty different tracking technologies, all of them have specific advantages and disadvantages. Thus, finding the right technology fit is difficult. Furthermore, since most of these technologies are proprietary systems, combining them holds another technological challenge. Consequently, the PoC was initiated to proof that a powerful IoT environment could handle different tracking technologies while being easy to implement.

The PoC proved that the technology stack from Elisa, SAS and PTC was capable of meeting above requirements, and produced meaningful results: Based on the PoC’s evaluation results Liebherr expects the following benefits of rolling out the solution company-wide: Optimized transport routes, accelerated assembly steps, a reduction of setup times and a dynamic stock adjustment.

“In today’s fast-moving digital arena, businesses need to innovate and adapt if they want to stay ahead. Liebherr wanted us to develop a proof of an advanced, easy to use solution integrating their track and trace systems, creating events from geofencing data, and visualize the real-time information on top of their AutoCAD floor layouts. By following a middleware concept around ThingWorx we are capable to collect data from multiple Track&Trace vendors, create an analytics-based event management, and present the relevant information in our seamlessly integrated visualization.”, says Kari Terho, Elisa Smart Factory General Manager.

The solution comprises of an IoT stack that facilitates the integration, analysis and visualization of data to improve production processes and optimize the whole value chain accordingly. PTC contributed its industrial IoT platform Thingworx that provides a foundation for integrating a wide variety of data sources and serves as the development environment to create the tracking application. SAS Event Stream Processing receives position data from the tracking systems and calculates whether and for how long a component is located within or outside an assembly area, predicts assembly and production times in real-time to enable precise planning Elisa Smart Factory’s app allows users to access the results, information, and visualizations. The app serves as a digital twin to virtually replicate Liebherr’s actual workstations, and set the context for the tracking information. Combining different information sources and providing the information’s context helps managers to interpret the information more easily and make better decisions to identify process bottlenecks, and facilitate asset management across all production plants.

“With Elisa Smart Factory solution, we expect cutting down on the number of man hours spent on asset management. Instead of having to pull asset data from different sources, employees can achieve full asset visibility, including location, current status and usage history on a single, web-based dashboard. For us, it was important that testing the solution takes little effort: all you need is an AutoCAD file from your production site, then we can already simulate the solution’s behavior for a proper evaluation”, says Matthias Morath from Liebherr.

Elisa Smart Factory was selected by Liebherr to visualize integrated solution data and insights from Liebherr’s asset tracking systems, factory floor plan and geofencing solution. This kind of integrated overview of operations is extremely valuable e.g. for large factories where expensive machinery and tools play a vital role and where breakdowns and misplaced equipment are incredibly costly and can impact production. The visualization provides a realtime overview of asset locations and utilization, including a virtual window to the shop floor. This helps factory workers gain much better understanding of what is happening in the spaces they are managing.

To find out more about how the Elisa Smart Track and Trace can be integrated in your asset management system or any other software that would benefit from real-world visualization, please visit www.elisasmartfactory.com.

About Elisa Smart Factory

Elisa Smart Factory is a leading provider of artificial intelligence and Industrial IoT solutions for industry manufacturers. We connect to any data source, harness streams of data, and combine data analytics and machine learning to create outcomes like increased uptime, production quality and yield. Being part of Elisa corporation, we have decades of experience in managing vast, highly automated network infrastructures as well as predicting and preventing disruptive incidents. Our aim is to use this expertise and become the leading provider of factory digitalization solutions in Europe and beyond.