Problem:
Bypassing a customer's network to remotely monitor stress management equipment in cooling systems
Solution:
Nalco is the leading provider of integrated water treatment and process improvement services, chemicals and equipment programs for industrial and institutional applications. The company’s goal is to help ensure optimum operations in the customer’s plant, mill or municipality through proactive process improvements and the prevention of water and process-related problems.
Nalco currently serves more than 60,000 customer locations and has an annual turnover in excess of US $3 billion. Its UK customers include a large combined heat and power plant in North West England, which uses Nalco’s 3D TRASAR®, a product that optimizes cooling system stress to minimize total cost of operation and prevent operational problems. 3D TRASAR measures key system parameters and responds with appropriate corrective action and communications with system operators.
As on many of the sites where the 3D TRASAR is deployed, Nalco wanted to enable network connectivity in an environment where a wired IP connection was not available or practical. While in some locations it may be possible for companies like Nalco to connect devices via a customer’s network, customers typically have security reservations about a supplier connecting through their corporate network. Providing an independent wired connection in these circumstances is frequently neither practical, nor commercially viable.
Nalco turned to Digi to provide a cost-effective and easy-to-deploy remote device networking solution. The answer was the new
Digi Connect WAN, a wireless Wide Area Network (WAN) gateway/router, which provides an alternative to traditional wired TCP/IP using wireless GSM (mobile telephone) technology to provide network connectivity.
With Digi Connect WAN, regular data transfers and important alarms are transmitted to Nalco’s network via the GSM cellular telephone network. The product also makes it possible to download updates and remotely control the 3D TRASAR. Prior to successful implementation of wireless gateway/router, Nalco sales personnel had to devote a large proportion of their time when visiting the customer to maintenance, configuration and data download from the 3D TRASAR. Now it is possible to perform all these tasks remotely from virtually anywhere.
“Using the Digi Connect WAN has resulted in better reporting of more detailed data and meant that our technical sales representatives can concentrate more of their time when they visit customers on added value consultancy services rather than working on the 3D TRASAR installation,” commented Colin Hepting, Product Manager, Nalco Global Equipment Solutions Europe. “An additional benefit of deploying this wireless remote networking solution is that our representatives now need to visit sites less often and customers can receive regular e-mail reports and data feeds direct to the on-site control room.”
Digi partner and Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) Wyless Plc provided the SIM cards for the Digi Connect WAN GSM, enabling it to be installed quickly and easily.
“The first installation could hardly have been easier,” added Hepting. “We connected and configured the Digi Connect WAN and had it up and working in a matter of minutes. Altogether, the solution provided a cost-effective means of connecting our device into the corporate IP network,” said Hepting.
This is the first implementation of the Digi Connect WAN in the UK and Nalco is now looking at a Europe-wide roll out across its portfolio of 3D TRASAR installations across the continent.
Now you can...
Reduce on-site customer visits by utilizing cellular connectivity to manage remote devices.
Solution: