Michael Knöpfle

PASM and PSsystec: IoT fault management for 3000 sites

How can faults, energy consumption and equipment conditions be monitored reliably across thousands of distributed buildings? PASM and PSsystec provide deep insights into the modernization of Telekom’s internal building technology in this episode. The challenge was a heterogeneous infrastructure with outdated signaling, in some cases still based on ISDN, and high costs for traditional building control systems. At the same time, there was a lack of transparency regarding devices and availability at over 3,000 locations. The solution is a cellular based IoT architecture built with the SMARTbox from PSsystec and Telekom’s Cloud of Things. The gateways can be installed noninvasively, connected via cellular networks and fully configured remotely. Functions such as hysteresis based measurement values, flexible transmission cycles, over the air updates and remote parameterization enable scalable device management across large fleets. PASM uses this setup to monitor cooling and heating systems, compressed air units and mobile power generators and gains a unified cloud-based view of states and alarms. The business value is clear: PASM reduces hardware costs by a factor of ten and increases operational reliability through greater transparency. PSsystec reports up to fifty percent fewer service deployments in other projects thanks to smarter data logic. At the same time the flexibility of IoT becomes evident, from single small buildings to large decentralized fleets.