Collecting data enables to reduce operating costs and emissions

Technological development as a result of close collaboration

 

Creating the Kalmar Insight Solution has been a long evolutionary journey for both Kalmar and Cargotec Digital Solutions Hub (DiSH). Kalmar is the industry forerunner in terminal automation and in energy efficient cargo handling, and one in four container movements around the globe are handled by a Kalmar solution. Kalmar has been collecting data on the performance of its machines and terminals for some years. The goal of creating the Kalmar Insight was to make use of this big data and create value for Kalmar customers by providing them with the possibility of remotely monitoring the efficiency of their operations and equipment. The data and relevant KPIs from operations and equipment are displayed as dynamic dashboards that can be accessed either through a desktop or mobile application.

Other features of Kalmar Insight include equipment checklists, which drivers report digitally when they start working with a machine. There is a fully inhouse developed driver sign-in feature integrated in Kalmar Insight, which helps create driver-specific operational, safety and business KPIs. Kalmar Insight also supports maintenance planning of the machines, by letting customers order maintenance and parts directly from the Kalmar Insight. Moreover, equipment movement tracking, events and alarm monitoring provides valuable information to customers.

 

Cost savings with a digital application

In cargo-handling, machine downtimes and excess fuel consumption come with a high price tag. Kalmar Insight is aimed at helping customers to make the operation more efficient and sustainable by giving them the possibility to monitor and track their equipment and operations closely, for example by tracking the individual moves of their equipment in the terminal area, real time fuel consumption information and production hours. The application also helps in predicting future maintenance needs and helps to plan them so that unnecessary downtime can be reduced.

 

Finnish technology excellence working for global markets

The project concept was created by Kalmar in 2016, and the first pilot customer was a Finnish terminal operator. Since then, the scale of the project has gone up drastically, and today Kalmar customers around the globe are using the solution. In 2019, the development responsibility was handed over to the newly created Cargotec DiSH.

Since the DiSH foundation in 2019, Kalmar Insight has been among the largest and longest projects it has been working on. The development is done with a close collaboration between Kalmar and DiSH and requires a vast set of technical expertise from professionals within software engineering, cloud computing and UX design.

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One of the biggest challenges throughout the development process has been the amount of collaboration needed between the development team at DiSH and stakeholders within Kalmar organization which are spread around the world. The development has taken a lot of hard work and patience and we have had to adjust our timeframe and ways of working as we go.

Waqas Hafeez, Technical Product Owner of Kalmar Insight

 

Cargotec IoT Edge as the cornerstone of the web application

 

Kalmar Insight relies heavily on equipment and terminal IoT data. In the past, Cargotec has been using third party IoT solutions. This has created certain limitations. Therefore, starting from the beginning of 2020, Cargotec has been building its own solution named Cargotec IoT Edge, which is an AWS based IoT data acquisition system. Now, both the equipment and cloud are running on Cargotec's own software and its own IoT device management which has greatly increased the opportunities and possibilities for Kalmar Insight.

After data is ingested to the cloud, it is processed and aggregated to be served to the desktop or mobile applications in a fast and efficient way. In fact, the biggest technological challenge with the solution has been the sheer amount of ingested data which needs to be processed into useful KPIs with speed and efficiency.

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What makes the Cargotec Edge IoT solution so special is that it has been created and developed fully in-house by our own cloud platform team.

Waqas Hafeez, Technical Product Owner of Kalmar Insight

 

The backend of the Kalmar Insight has been developed in Node.js and the front end uses the React framework. The AWS backend is hosted in AWS EC2, which provides scalable computing capacity. The Kalmar Insight backend uses APIs provided by Cargotec cloud to consume aggregated data. Kalmar Insight is also fully integrated with Cargotec’s business and sales applications such SAP and Salesforce. Additionally, as a side project, Cargotec cloud also provides external APIs directly to customers with aggregated data so that customers can also connect their own IT infrastructure to the same data.

 

Globally collected data supports Cargotec's sustainability goals

 

One of the biggest advantages of the Kalmar Insight becomes visible when actions are taken based on the data to make the operation more energy and time efficient. The resulting actions not only reduce fuel and energy consumption, but also lead to reduction of both costs and carbon emissions. The environmental impact of streamlining operations and reducing fuel emissions is no small feat, with thousands of machines already connected to Kalmar Insight worldwide. Again, this is another step forward in Cargotec's sustainability goals. The number of Kalmar customers using the solution has been going up steadily over time, which further proves that the demand is set to increase also in the long run.

The work of DiSH on the solutions is, however, not yet complete. New features are being added all the time. Currently, two applications, Insight and MyParts, are being integrated into the new MyKalmar platform. After the change, users will have an easier access through the same user interface to the Kalmar spare parts webshop, providing a more streamlined customer experience.

 

Are you interested in working on similar projects? DiSH is hiring!