Case Study

Mission

Invent, develop and deliver the tracking system for (factory/industrial) transportation trolleys. Fix the issue of trolleys missing in action to optimize costs and performance for the client.

Mission Complete

Objectives

  • Invent the way to localize transportation trolleys in a manufacturing plant

    Our client was experiencing problems with transportation trolleys missing in action. It was disrupting the production process of the plant. Even when the trolley was identified as broken, it was still challenging to locate it for repair. The issue was generating significant costs.

System Components & Features

Rapid Prototyping Using Agile in HW Approach

Prototypes deployed on customer’s production line to collect data for AI algorithms

3 iterations to develop
a working trolley prototype

Mechanical, Electrical Engineering
& Firmware

Squad

  • Project Manager
  • Mechanical Engineer
  • Electrical Engineer
  • Software Engineers
  • Firmware Engineers

Mission Timeline

Technical Solution

We used sensors - accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, and encoders to gather data about the trolley state. The device integrated into the trolley construction sent data from those sensors to hubs via Sub-GHz. Hubs connected to the backend for further data processing and visualized them in the intuitive application.

Gear

  • Sensors (accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, encoders)
  • Machine learning
  • Sub-Gigahertz (Sub-GHz) Communication
  • Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) Testing
  • Mobile development

Application Interface

Main Dashboard
Trolley’s details
Traffic statistic

Business Impact

  • The position of every trolley in the plant is known. It eliminated the cost of searching for broken trolleys.

  • Sensors gather a lot of different data about the trolleys. It fosters optimization and helps to predict problems.

  • The intuitive app provides insight for every stakeholder.

  • We fixed “the trolley problem.”

Client’s Testimonial

We hired Krzysztof and his team to fix a specific problem for our client - Electrolux. We needed to develop a novel way of localizing transportation trolleys inside the plants. The client had a set of conditions that needed to be met. The proposed solution had to be flexible due to frequent reconfigurations of production lines. The changes in the construction of the plant had to be kept to the minimum. And, last but not least, the proposed solution should cooperate well with all the machinery already present in the plant. Krzysztof told us he is going to build and lead the team with a practical Agile approach. We decided we are ready to give it a try.

It quickly turned out it was a good decision. Krzysztof’s team did not stop on delivering the solution we asked for. While fixing one specific problem, they came up with a way to monitor all kinds of parameters of the trolley. They built the advanced prototype of the comprehensive monitoring system consisting of a device to be integrated with the transportation trolleys, hubs collecting information from those devices, backend with machine learning algorithms, and user-friendly applications to track the metrics.

We decided their solution was so good that we not only sold it to the client who asked for it, but we made it a part of our product portfolio, yielding a lot of inquiries from current and prospective clients. I most definitely recommend Krzysztof. I am sure exceeding clients’ expectations is his drill.

Artur Skrzyszewski Board of Directors