For a company with more than 90 years of history, perma-tec’s continued agility in the Industry 4.0 era has been impressive – and there is still plenty more innovation to come from the lubrication systems provider.
Through the most recent release of its perma STAR VARIO LONG RANGE in September 2024, incorporating LoRaWAN technology, tied up with the perma CONNECT solution for remote management, the company is succeeding in ‘elevating automated lubrication to a new level.’
Marco Preuß, perma-tec head of research and development, takes up the story. “It was working good – it is one of our high sellers – and we received good feedback from the market and from our customers,” explains Marco Preuß of the original perma STAR VARIO system. “But with the area of Industry 4.0, or IIoT, there were also questions from our customers: is it possible to have some devices where we can bring into this Industry 4.0 context?”
The low-range Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) made sense for one product iteration as the company’s systems are mostly battery-driven. Yet there was another target to aim for. Many of perma-tec’s heavy industry customers – think steel plants, mining sites and port operations – have lubrication points were access ranges from laborious to dangerous. After working with R&D, LoRaWAN was chosen for the aptly-named long range product.
“We can cover hundreds of square metres with one or two gateways and thousands of lubrication points,” explains Dr Matthias Lenhart, global head of technology and production. “The lubrication equipment is then sending its data to one centralised gateway and the maintenance guy, who is necessary for the complete overseeing of such industries.
“He is sitting in one centralised room and, like Homer Simpson in the power plant, he is getting everything in one dashboard, and he can then decide when to send out somebody.”
The process to building a LoRa product was not entirely straightforward, however. “It was perfect that we could get an LNS (LoRaWAN network server) more or less off the shelf, or we could get gateways off the shelf from different companies, but the complete ecosystem is not something which you can get off the shelf,” says Dr Matthias Lenhart. “So what we needed to do is build out our own puzzle out of these individual puzzle pieces. This was something which we really needed to set up on our end, and this took quite a lot of time.”
It is this journey – its obstacles and boundaries, how to orchestrate individual components – which will form part of the session of Marco Preuß and Dr Matthias Lenhart at IoT Tech Expo Global on February 4-5. There will also be a look toward the future. For perma-tec, as Marco Preuß notes, scaling up the connection solution on the market, and industry partnerships, will form a large part of those plans.
Ultimately, the continuous effort and endeavour has been worth it. “We have great coverage across really heavy industries, and therefore the end customers really love the product,” says Dr Matthias Lenhart. “Because they just need to go out, install our product, place one gateway, power the gateway… everything else is done basically in the background for them, and then they can really use our solution.”
Watch the full discussion with Marco Preuß and Dr Matthias Lenhart below:
Photo by GeoJango Maps on Unsplash
