Recently, as I was explaining that we use Internet of Things (IoT) technology to monitor tanks in the exhibition booth of our company, Numerex Corp,a curious person who had stepped into the booth asked an interesting question:“Why doesn’t the military monitor their own tanks?”, Clearly, the word “tank” conjures up many images in people’s minds. The tanks I was referring to were storage tanks, and in this young questioner’s mind, the word ‘tanks’ immediately brought about images of artillery tanks from action games and WW II movies. In this particular situation, I wouldn’t fault that person or the provoked imagery, since the common everyday language frequently refers to “cars built like tanks”, or needing “a tank to go over a snow pile”.

We typically forget the tanks that are all around us–storage tanks– storing many, many different types of liquids and gases. We turn on a faucet, and are thankful to get water instantly, because the water was stored in a city/municipal water storage tank. We drive to a gas station and connect the nozzle to fill up our cars, and are thankful for the instant flow of gasoline from the gas station’s storage tanks. There are millions of similar storage tanks, which come in many shapes, sizes and modes. A good number of them are cylindrical, large and stationary. Interestingly, many tanks are not cylindrical – and are a composite of cone, oval and cylinder. There are a fair number of tanks that are used in transportation.

Have you ever wondered about the complexity of keeping those tanks filled with the appropriate liquid? Consider a distributor storing motor oil in large tanks to be used for distribution to retail outlets that perform a traditional “oil change” service. For the longest time, the tools used to keep track of how much motor oil was present in the tanks were very primitive. The most common measurement tool was the trusty dipstick. We use the dipstick to check how much oil we have in our cars. Tank measurements have also been accomplished using similar dipsticks and other tools – such as flow meters to keep track of ingress and egress amounts. Without remote monitoring, this requires a person to read the dipstick or the flow meters. A manual meter read has many common errors, among many, of mistaken numerals (for example, ‘6’ for ‘8’, or ‘1’ for ‘7’). Enterprises have instituted very manual processes built around measuring, recording and updating this information.

Remote monitoring allows our motor oil distributor to have a periodic and on-demand view of inventory on hand using a cloud based portal from any connected device

Errors or omissions in this process comes with its incumbent problems. Missing a reading or reading error on the high side may lead to under supply; a reading error on the low side may lead to excess ordering; and not being able to gauge inventory levels may lead to poor customer service and untimely deliveries. If the tanks are remote and spread out, the enterprise incurs further cost in truck rolls to all the remote sites. To run an efficient business, the motor oil distributor must have well-trained staff, a good process discipline built around a lot of manual processes, accurate inventory information, and thorough understanding of variations in customer demand. This is yesterday’s method of tank monitoring.

Now, fast forward to today. What if we can instead provide an “electronic dipstick” and cellular connectivity to the tanks using IoT technology. So that the tank fill levels can be remotely monitored? This opens up a whole range of improvements to the manual process that our motor oil distributor used, rendering the manual methods virtually obsolete. Thanks to remote monitoring, truck rolls to the remote sites to measure and record information from various tanks are virtually eliminated. This is a huge saving in operational costs. Secondly, remote monitoring allows our motor oil distributor to have a periodic and on-demand view of inventory on hand using a cloud-based portal from any connected device. This smooths out ordering and provides much needed cash flow and cap-ex improvements. Further optimization can be achieved if the distributor extends their reach by offering to monitor their retail customers’ storage tanks. Knowing the retail customers demand allows for a seamless supply chain, especially when all this information is fed into the enterprise inventory management and procurement management systems. The retail customers’ supplies can be replenished in a timely manner, reducing emergency deliveries, and improving customer satisfaction all around. The distributor’s daily truck rolls ensure only those in need are replenished, eliminating unnecessary tank ‘top-off’s’, resulting in cost savings in fuel, vehicle depreciation, and labor. Other incremental benefits include route planning and optimization around inclement weather, traffic or geographic areas, as well as accurate quantities to eliminate expensive return to stock operations.

Can this motor oil example be extended to other liquids and gases? Absolutely. In the industrial sector, we can use similar monitoring for industrial chemicals, industrial cleaners, as well as gases such as Nitrogen, Helium, Argon and Oxygen. In the agricultural sector, it can be extended to agricultural chemicals, fertilizers, and waste streams. In the energy industry, all kinds of lubricants, oils and fuels can be monitored similarly. Flammable liquids and gases such as Propane need special device certifications like ‘intrinsically safe’ (IS) and ATEX certifications. The “electronic dipstick” technology is fairly advanced in that a variety of sensors such as pressure and temperature can also be measured based on the liquid or gas being monitored.

At Numerex, we apply IoT to industrial applications and provide business process automation. While the benefits of IoT are enormous to these applications in terms of cost savings and operational efficiencies, the integration of the technology and resulting deployments may be daunting for enterprises to take up on their own. By providing a fully managed end-to-end solution, including devices, transport network, cloud platform and ERP integration, we make it simple for enterprises to adopt IoT for business process automation.