What if a cold storage unit at your facility was to experience a technical malfunction, or the temperature monitoring sensors themselves malfunctioned?
A technical malfunction at a cold storage facility in Johannesburg led to a temperature spike, spoiling several tons of frozen meat. This resulted in millions of rands in losses
Management were taken by surprise – since they had temperature sensors in the facilities. – but they had never planned contingencies in the event of receiving a high temperature alarm?
What could this management team have done to mitigate this event?
- Dual temperature monitoring systems immediately spring to mind. Multiple sensor types with independent power sources are required to detect temperature deviations immediately, even if one sensor fails.
- Connect these sensors to a central monitoring system with 24/7 access – it’s not sufficient to hope that a manager or other designated employee with diverse duties will receive the notification.
- Secondary cooling units, emergency generators or even alternative storage facility should be identified or provided.
- Scheduled preventative maintenance checks for all cooling equipment with corrective action is critical.
- Equipment redundancy , in the forms of spare cooling units or parts, ready for prompt replacement can be provided for.
- Emergency response procedures to isolate affected product, move to alternative storage unit, or even an offsite or third party storage facility with readily available mobile cold storage units for transport are identified. Train employees in the procedures.
These measures may seem self evident – however not so in the case of the company we mentioned at the outset.
Here Gensix springs into action.
We realise that you need :
- multiple sensor types with power backup.
- 24/7 remote and local site monitoring and alerts.
- Rapid detection and notification,
- Integration of multiple sensor protocols.
- Equipment across the chain connected to redundant power supply.
To start with we have thermal cameras that remotely monitor temperatures. These cameras will alert you when the temperature passes a set threshold, or fluctuates too rapidly. Two of these cameras, stationed at the relevant storage unit, with an independent power backed-up source, provide the necessary redundancy.
We couple these cameras to our industrial protocol gateway. This gateway facilitates the collection and communication of data from a multitude of devices each with their own protocols. Legacy equipment sensors can be integrated into the gateway. Our gateways bring data from diverse sources together at a single endpoint.
To meet the need for immediate, live monitoring and alerting we provide our NVIDIA Jetson based devices as powerful edge computing devices. Providing multiple I/O interface connections for data and video collection at Gigabit speed. Being on-premise as edge devices with 100x the compute power of standard AI cameras and NVR’s there is no network delay in sending and processing data and video on a cloud or latency affected network, neither processing bottlenecks for low compute power ai cameras, DVR’s or NVRS.
These solutions can be extended to incorporate mobile assets and integrate them with the fixed facility system – providing monitoring across the chain of operation.
Our combinations of revolutionary Nvidia Jetson based compute hardware, protocol gateways and AI software empower us to customize a solution that meets your specific circumstances.
Don’t get caught out when you realize that temperature controls have malfunctioned, you can be prepared, and navigate this threat with confidence.
PS – I omitted to mention that our thermal cameras have the added benefit of early warning fire detection. Recall that cold storage facility in Cape Town that burnt down – leaving a smelly, mass of rotting, roasted chicken and millions of rands in losses.
