Heavy Machinery

Remote work locations and “big data” transmission requirements are common inhibitors for heavy equipment manufacturers adopting AI and IoT solutions. Bolt Data Connect solves this issue with its unique, modular, gateway architecture. Bolt Data Connect partners with manufacturers’ product engineering team to spec out and deliver industrial gateways that enable edge processing and cloud connectivity; enabling heavy machinery to locally cache its big data, process AI and IoT rules and algorithms, and communicate with the Cloud in real time.

Heavy machinery commonly carries a Service Level Agreement specifying equipment uptime and service response times. Manufacturers frequently struggle to validate equipment uptime; creating the risk of contract penalties and lost revenue. Bolt Data Connect enables the equipment manufacturers to automatically generate an equipment health report appended to the lease invoice as evidence that the uptime SLA was achieved. When unplanned downtime occurs, Bolt Data Connect's real-time alerts minimize the manufacturer's service response times; ensuring adherence to service response SLAs.

With access to real-time, visualized, equipment data, manufacturers’ call center agents can better support customer issues. By opening the asset record in the service management solution, call center agents can view 2D and 3D renderings of the equipment with real-time performance data overlays and Al-recommended next steps. With Bolt Data, call center agents can resolve more customer cases in less time and without dispatching service technicians.

With access to real-time device data, Bolt Data Connect remotely monitors heavy equipment performance to improve operating reliability, prevent unauthorized usage, and reduce service response time. Bolt Data Connect can be configured to provide real-time notifications when performance anomalies are detected; enabling manufacturers to proactively communicate observations and coordinate recommended services. Similarly, Bolt Data Connect can be configured to provide notifications to equipment managers if the machine operates outside of the specified geo-fence or planned work hours. To avoid false positives, Bolt Data Connect partners with manufacturers’ engineering teams to define data cleansing and validation protocols to ensure a focus on the right messages.

As Bolt Data Connect captures and analyzes machine data over time, system analytics predict asset failures and recommend service responses. For gue customer-owned equipment, Bolt Data Connect automatically creates sales opportunities and notifies manufacturers’ selling teams of the opportunity to sell parts and service. For leased equipment, Bolt Data Connect automatically coordinates manufacturers’ service activity. Receiving intelligent preventive maintenance recommendations reduces the risk of equipment breakdown and larger service expenses while analytics support strategic decision-making to optimize the performance of the overall business.

As real-time machine data identified performance anomalies, Bolt Data Connect considers the context of the equipment when automating the service response. Whether the equipment is customer-owned or leased, the customer account type and financial status, equipment entitlements, and other relevant information all factor into how service for an asset must be coordinated. Bolt Data Connect partners closely with equipment manufacturers to tailor the solution to support each service scenario, driving efficiencies across the back office.

Using equipment latitudinal and longitudinal information in loT data streams, Bolt Data Connect can plot each machine locations on a map with high precision. Equipment geo-locations help service technicians locate machines in the field and enable alerts when equipment is not in the planned location. Bolt Data Connect also uses geo-locations and data stream timestamps to correlate equipment environmental conditions in predictive algorithms. Because equipment theft is prevalent, manufacturers can offer a differentiated “goodwill” service by helping customers recover stolen equipment.