Industrial sealant specialist Condat, together with Sigfox and technology integrator delaware, have developed an IoT solution that extends the operational life and performance of heavy tunnel boring equipment. CondatLink employs IoT within tunnels to monitor and manage stocks of sealant, which are vital to continued operation of boring equipment, especially in potentially wet conditions.

Until now Condit’s sales teams worked with customers to estimate requirements, without being able to obtain precise information on sealant consumption.

CondatLink started as a concept last November, and in January, the project was launched.

Sigfox was chosen by Condat for its 0G network covering more than 70 countries. The company proposed fully integrating the solution into Condat’s SAP environment.

Sigfox led the implementation of the CondatLink solution, which will be available internationally and will enable more precise information about the level of consumption of sealant on building sites, thanks to a connected device that monitors the opening and closing of sealant drums.

The device is attached to the drums as soon as they leave the production plant. It is small (116x45x30mm), light (around 100g) and has, at least, a one-year battery life. The software uses Sigfox Monarch (international device, frequency management) and Atlas (geolocation) technologies. It emits a message regularly to signal the location of the drum (asset tracking) while emitting regular messages indicating its change of state when the drum is opened (asset monitoring).

The information obtained by this connected device is sent to Condat and their clients via the Sigfox 0G network and is available on a dedicated tracking application. This platform will take the form of a dashboard allowing the customer to track consumption and stock, and Condat to manage its deliveries worldwide.

A test phase is planned for July with the implementation of this solution over two sites. Initially, the challenge will be the deployment of tens of thousands of objects by next year.

“We needed a solution to prevent our tunnel boring machine customers from running out of sealant on their sites. In the life of a construction site, many parameters can speed up or slow down the consumption of this product. To satisfy our customers, we had to think of a way to find out about it, without having to contact someone on the worksites. We had the feeling that IoT was the right way to go, so we turned to delaware, our technology solutions partner of more than 23 years, to help us,” said Guy Chemisky, director of operations at Condat.

“We started this project together by working on an end-to-end strategy: from the ideas phase to the design of the applications. We then put several people from the IoT ecosystem in touch with each other. Sigfox was chosen to support us during the implementation of this project and the design of the tracking and monitoring equipment,” said Baptiste Duriez, partner at delaware.

“The Condat and delaware teams had carried out an in-depth study of the service experience expected for users and how the solution would fit into production. Even the notion of return on investment with stock management had been analysed. We were therefore able to bring our expertise to the project to introduce a solution very quickly,” said Patrick Cason, managing director of Sigfox France.

“Tomorrow, we will be able to go further than just monitoring the consumption of sealant on building sites. It will be possible to do this with many other products and for sectors other than tunnel builders. One of our major technological challenges in the coming years will be to make greater use of the data we have been collecting for more than 20 years to build predictive models and serve our customers better,” said Guy Chemisky.