Swiss-based qiio (pronounced “kio”) announced on Tuesday a partnership with Thermoplan, manufacturer of the “Black&White” brand of professional coffee machines. Since 1999, Thermoplan has been the exclusive provider of fully automatic coffee machines to one of the world’s largest coffee house chains.
Professional coffee machines are normally sold with a maintenance contract. Manufacturers usually do not know how coffee shops use their machines, e.g. whether a machine serves 2 or 60 cups of coffee per hour. Without real-time data to monitor machine usage, technicians are sent to shops on a monthly basis which may be too frequent for some machines, or too little for machines that serve a lot of coffee.
qiio offers end-to-end IoT solutions including hardware, software, connectivity, cloud services and operation. Everything customers need to securely connect, monitor and control their products via an online dashboard is delivered.
The company takes the complexity out of the IoT, creating “off-the-shelf” solutions customized to customer requirements within 4-8 weeks. With headquarters in Zürich, Switzerland, qiio’s technology is ideal for logistics, remote monitoring and predictive maintenance.
Based on embedded sensors and qiio’s IoT connectivity hardware and cloud platform, Thermoplan is now able to remotely monitor machine usage and other critical parameters in real-time. As a result, they only need to send out technicians when maintenance is actually required, saving on average one service visit per machine per year. With thousands of machines installed, this results in an annual cost savings in the millions of dollars.
To complete Thermoplan’s coffee machine IoT monitoring system, they looked to qiio to provide a secure, “plug and play” wireless connectivity solution and cloud-based monitoring platform.
Based on qiio’s “IoT Concentrator” hardware and secure WiFi connectivity solution, sensor data is collected, concentrated, encrypted and relayed directly to a secure cloud platform hosting qiio’s remote monitoring dashboard. qiio’s solution includes a seamless migration path from WiFi to cellular connectivity, providing future-proof IoT connectivity for machines located in even the most remote locations.
“Our client expects smoothly running machines with minimum down-time”, said Sylvia Schoeberl, head of marketing, “For Thermoplan, maintenance is a significant part of overall costs. With qiio’s IoT solution, we have achieved the optimum balance between the two, resulting in a reliable, uninterrupted supply of great-tasting coffee which is the foundation of our client’s business.”
“Thermoplan’s huge installed base of professional coffee machines is precisely the type of application where qiio’s IoT solutions excel,” said Felix Adamczyk, CEO at qiio, “We handle the complexity of remote asset management, allowing Thermoplan to focus on their core business – enabling their clients to deliver the best coffee experience to consumers quickly, reliably and cost-effectively.”
