Outcomes

• Transitioned from on-premise to hybrid edge-cloud solution by leveraging Davra.
• Real-time data from remote mining assets improves maintenance and service scheduling.
• Deployed solution on Davra in 7 months across 40 countries.
• Hybrid offering drove 4% of revenue in the first 3 months.
• Davra IoT Platform enabled Wenco to focus on delivering business value to customers.
• Digital twins provide insights into the health of mining assets.

Situation

Wenco International Mining Systems, Ltd. (opens new window) is a Canadian technology company providing products for the control and management of surface mining equipment. Wenco's mission is to help mining operators achieve their goals by optimising the management, dispatch, and utilisation of their fleets.

A subsidiary of Hitachi Construction Machinery (HCM), Wenco enables HCM's digital capabilities while supporting other heavy machinery brands such as Komatsu and Caterpillar in multi-OEM environments.

Wenco's asset health solution, Readyline, monitors mining assets such as excavators, trucks, and drills, with a typical lifetime value of $33M per asset. The software analyses large volumes of IoT data from hundreds of sensors on the equipment to inform engineers and operators about out-of-condition scenarios or when maintenance may be required.

Wenco's solution empowers its clients to prevent critical failures of the high-value assets by alerting operators of issues before they become a problem, while also providing insights about why issues are occurring. In doing so they reduce maintenance costs, prevent downtime, and improve efficiency for their customers.

In 2020, the company set out to enhance their on-premise solution to a hybrid edge-cloud solution. By transferring the solution to a secure cloud platform, Wenco would benefit from real-time insights, access to AI algorithms, and stronger collaboration with OEM dealers.

Impact

Wenco initially attempted to build the capability from the ground up, resulting in ”a few false starts”, according to Daniel Moylan, Director of Software Development at Wenco.

“We just didn't have the resources or skill sets within the organisation to build the intelligence and infrastructure needed to deploy into a high cadence, highly available environment, and scale quickly.”

They realised they would need to make fundamental changes to their architecture to support the move to a multi-tenant cloud environment. This would mean expanding the team and acquiring new skill sets to maintain, secure, and evolve these services over the life of the product.

Wenco were under pressure to deliver. Acquiring these skill sets was an additional cost and making such fundamental changes would add significant time to the project. Additionally, these problems were not core to the business but were directing time and energy away from Wenco delivering value for their customers.

Resolution

The challenges Wenco faced were common pillars of all industrial IoT solutions - device management, data management, security and compliance, etc. As such, Wenco changed tack and sought an IoT platform to provide these fundamental building blocks. As Daniel Moylan puts it, “We wanted to focus on building our business value, rather than building the entire vertical stack”.

Wenco chose Davra as it provided both out-of-the-box tooling and the flexibility to build what they wanted. Davra provided the fundamental IoT capabilities that Wenco needed such as multi-tenant support and secure device management. It also allowed Wenco to add value downstream by integrating with third-party ecosystems in Hitachi, HCM, and global OEM partners.

This allowed Wenco to scale their offering and focus on delivering value for their customers, instead of solving cloud service delivery problems.

In Davra, we found the right fit between the software capabilities to manage the system versus the flexibility to deploy the services to grow the product we wanted.

Accelerated Deployment

The Davra Platform enabled Wenco to build and deploy a real-time condition monitoring application without starting from scratch. Wenco's developers could access the features of the platform through the API without changing the user experience they were already developing.

This enabled Wenco to accelerate the deployment of their cloud-edge solution, going live just 7 months after signing up with Davra. This not only saved on development costs but also enabled Wenco to start generating revenue sooner. According to Andrew Pyne, Wenco CEO, their new hybrid offering drove 4% revenue growth for Wenco in 2023, despite only going live in October of that year.

Digital Twins

The platform's flexibility has opened up additional benefits for Wenco and its customers. They've been able to experiment, get feedback from users, and deploy changes very quickly without being constrained by an inflexible data model.

The digital twin functionality of the platform has enabled Wenco to create virtual representations of its mining assets. They define digital twins of assets they're tracking in the field by gathering real data from the IoT devices embedded in the physical truck, excavator, or drill.

This allows them to simulate and analyse real-world scenarios. This capability has enabled Wenco to evolve their understanding of the equipment and the needs of their customers, and then quickly translate this into their product. These insights will further empower Wenco's customers to preemptively address potential failures, reduce downtime, and lower maintenance costs.

Looking ahead, Wenco plans to expand its portfolio of digital offerings, with a focus on predictive capabilities and AI-driven insights. This continued evolution will further empower mines, distributors, and parent Hitachi Construction Machinery to achieve higher efficiencies and lower operating costs.

Conclusions

Wenco International Mining Systems successfully transitioned from an on-premise solution to a hybrid edge-cloud platform by partnering with Davra for their IoT infrastructure. By focusing on delivering business value rather than building cloud infrastructure from scratch, Wenco were able to accelerate deployment, reduce development costs, and start generating revenue sooner.

The flexibility of the Davra platform enabled Wenco to innovate quickly, respond to customer needs, and enhance its digital twin capabilities for better equipment monitoring. They are now collecting real-time data from remote mining assets, helping their customers reduce unplanned downtime, improve efficiency, and reduce maintenance costs.

By transitioning to a hybrid edge-cloud platform on Davra, Wenco not only accelerated its innovation pipeline but also positioned itself as a leader in the mining industry's digital transformation. The new platform not only reduced operational costs and time-to-market but also gave Wenco the flexibility to rapidly iterate and evolve its offerings, ensuring a future-proof solution for its global customer base.