At a glance
- Client
- A mid-sized industrial manufacturerName withheld for confidentiality
- Industry
- Manufacturing
- Service
- Cloud
- Scope
- Hybrid cloud design, edge gateways and data pipelines
The challenge
The plant ran machines from several generations. Older equipment spoke industrial protocols that modern software could not read, and new IoT sensors sent data to separate tools that nobody had joined up.
Production data stayed trapped on the factory floor, and connecting it to the internet raised real security concerns.
Our approach
Inventory machines and protocols
We documented every machine, controller and data source on the shop floor.
Add edge gateways
Gateways translate legacy protocols and process data locally, so the plant keeps working even if the internet drops.
Build a secure hybrid link
Only the data that needs to leave the plant goes to the cloud, over encrypted, outbound-only connections.
Deliver usable dashboards
Plant managers get live views of output, downtime and machine health.
The solution
Old and new equipment now feed one data platform. Time-critical analysis runs at the edge inside the plant, while long-term trends and reporting run in the cloud.
The factory network stays isolated from direct internet access, and managers can see plant performance from anywhere.
Results
- Legacy machines connected without replacing them
- Local processing keeps the plant running during outages
- Encrypted, outbound-only cloud connections
- Live production dashboards for plant managers
Technology used
- Azure IoT Edge
- OPC UA
- MQTT
- Time-series database
- Power BI
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