Customer
The customer is a leading Austrian-based provider of integrated hardware and software solutions for vehicle emission testing in the automotive industry with a staff of more than 10,000 people and facilities in 45 countries worldwide.
Challenge
The customer is engaged in emission testing of various types of powertrain systems. Different gases are used to calibrate measurement equipment in the context of legal emission test procedures. Gases are stored in bottles in special storage rooms. A pressure sensor is applied to each gas cylinder and is connected to a measurement device.
The monitoring system is designed to control the condition of gas-supply equipment and bottles, to control leaks, and to ensure quality maintenance. The customer needed to develop a new version of the gas management system to optimize the maintenance costs (reduce operation personnel and gases wastage) and to migrate the system from a desktop solution to the web environment.
Solution
We have developed a centralized solution including server, client-server application, graphical user interface. The operators can monitor the gas-supply system both from the desktop (Windows 7, 10; Google Chrome) and from mobile devices: smartphone, tablet (Android, iOS). User-friendly GUI allows personnel to quickly respond to emergencies, effectively control a large number of critical indicators.
System capabilities:
• Monitoring of pressure and fill level of different calibration gases in gas bottles;
• Tracking of the expiration date and the predicted operating time of gas cylinders;
• Notification settings: pressure deviation, expiration date, remaining gas volume;
• Automatic sending of warning notifications when tracked indicators deviate from the established limits;
• Automatic gas line purging;
• Gas bottle locking/unlocking;
• Automatic registration of a new gas bottle in the system by scanning a QR code or PDF file received from the gas cylinder manufacturer;
• Automatic generation of system status reports at any time.
Results
The customer easily integrated our solution into his automotive engine testing process, optimized system maintenance costs, and accelerated the completion of regulatory documentation. Gas management system helps to maximize the number of valid tests thanks to a gas bottle locking mechanism and automated gas line purging.