Icing, warehouse congestion and late deliveries: When a high-speed door is defective, every second counts. But thanks to smart IoT technology, Hörmann uses SmartControl to repair and monitor its industrial doors remotely.

There’s an emergency in the warehouse of an online retailer: The high-speed door between two buildings isn’t working. Employees putting the deliveries together can no longer reach their colleagues packing the goods. Five forklifts are already waiting behind the door and a traffic jam is slowly forming. The firm’s logistics processes are severely disrupted, and deliveries are being delayed. This is a very real problem, especially for online retailers – where customers expect extremely fast shipping. According to the 2018 logistics study of a German retailers' association, nine out of ten of the 513 German online retailers surveyed stated that reliability is the most important selection criterion for their customers. Short delivery times are important for around two thirds (69 percent) of the respondents. A defective high-speed door in the warehouse therefore not only drives up the company’s costs – it can often late to a late delivery causing a customer to order from the competition the next time. And this, in turn, results in lost sales.

"In discussions with our customers, we experience firsthand how quickly a defective high-speed door can get them into trouble. Suddenly, the loading process, which is normally routine, goes haywire and the customer runs out of time," explains Rüdiger Bierhenke, Sales Manager for Industrial Doors, Loading Technology and Access Control Systems at Hörmann.

SMOOTH OPERATIONS THANKS TO REMOTE DIAGNOSIS

Hörmann is Europe's leading supplier of gates, doors, frames and motors for private and commercial real estate. To ensure that defective high-speed doors do not disrupt the work of its industrial customers, the western German company has developed the Hörmann SmartControl together with Deutsche Telekom and T-Systems Multimedia Solutions. A circuit board with an M2M SIM card and gateaway built in is connected directly to a high-speed door controller. SmartControl communicates via wireless and sends all data from the high-speed door straight to the Cloud of Things – the cloud for Telekom's Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. All sorts of readings are collected, from an opening-and-closing counter to the revving of the door motor.

A web portal from Hörmann is connected to the cloud, allowing the maintenance staff to keep an eye on over 1,500 parameters of each door. T-Systems Multimedia Solutions ensures both monitoring and the service portal operate smoothly thanks to 2nd- and 3rd-level support. As soon as a high-speed door starts to wear out, the portal can send a message. This enables Hörmann's customer service to arrange a maintenance appointment long before the door breaks down. Hörmann supplies SmartControl directly with new high-speed doors, but the firm can also retrofit already installed doors with the necessary technology.

PAID FOR AFTER THE SECOND SERVICE CALL

Back to the online retailer. The high-speed door jams after an error message. Via the web portal, the service provider immediately sees the error code and can solve the problem remotely in many cases. However, service team cannot access the gate without a customer’s knowledge: "The customer must confirm manually at the door every change that the service team initiates in the portal. This way we ensure that a door cannot be manipulated remotely," says Marc Aulenkamp, project manager for SmartControl at Hörmann.

This kind of intelligent service SmartControl provides is particularly helpful when working with cold storage areas. For example, the Iso Speed Cold deep-freeze doors ensure that the intended temperature of -24 degrees is maintained when cooling food. In addition, the doors prevent icing in the storage room as they block moist air. If the door does not close completely, only a few minutes are sufficient, and food such as meat, fish or ice cream will no longer be edible. "Every second counts when it comes to repairs," says Sales Manager Rüdiger Bierhenke. "On average, SmartControl pays for itself after just the second service visit to a customer." The Hörmann team is currently working on offering SmartControl for all types of industrial doors.