The Courier Guy: Unifying Systems with Ignition

00:10
Speaker 1
So this is for the career guy. For those of you that are not familiar. It seems to be a part of the industry that you guys are really excelling in and doing very good work in. So it would be the kind of take a lot, the Foschini groups, the Shoprites, but in this case, The Courier Guy.

00:27
Speaker 2
Yeah. So this is a progression of development that we’ve done over the years for the likes of Takealot and other big e-commerce companies. So there’s a lot of. Yeah, there’s a lot of development and a lot of ideas that have gone into delivering this one.

00:45
Speaker 1
Okay.

00:46
Speaker 2
So the Courier Guy, I think a lot of us are familiar with them. They are an incredibly aggressive courier company. If you haven’t received a package from the Courier Guy in your lifetime, you’re going too soon. They are growing. Got a very unique business model currently in the one facility that we’ve done 100,000 packages a day, but it doesn’t do it justice because they probably only sort for about six hours a day. It really is organised chaos.

01:45
Speaker 1
So they receive and dispatch, and only sort for six hours.

01:49
Speaker 2
Correct. Okay. Because most of those packages are sitting in the vehicles driving between your house or your office and their depot.

01:57
Speaker 1
Okay.

01:58
Speaker 2
So yeah, the numbers don’t do it justice. Also, it’s. This is not a, this is not making a widget or putting beer in a bottle. Every single package is unique. Different dimensions, different weights, people ship ball bearings. What else have we seen? We’ve seen interesting things that are destined to try and break stuff. I think the other thing about this is our approach in this industry is that our background is as an SI. In this industry, we’re actually a turnkey service. So we’re sitting here not just on the automation ignition side, but we actually deliver the full mechanical design implementation, commissioning and through life cycle. So it is slightly different from what I think the other presenters today. It’s not where our company comes from. Just. Yeah. Some interesting stats.

03:00
Speaker 2
We’ve been doing this in the industry for about seven years. Steep learning curve. But we’ve got about 10,000 meters of conveyor installed. And for those guys in the mining industry, this conveyor has a motor probably every meter or meter and a half. So when you say 10,000 meters of conveyor and 10,000 little motors, the biggest one we’ve ever installed in this industry is about 3 kilowatts. So it’s a vast amount of stuff. The information on a lot of those motors will get motor currents, we’ll get motor temperatures, and run hours.

03:38
Speaker 1
Fair amount of information.

03:39
Speaker 2
All sorts of information is coming.

03:41
Speaker 1
More than you would expect.

03:42
Speaker 2
More than you. Yeah, more than you expect. We can change the speed, speed feedback, all that good stuff, which is quite difficult to show in the presentation. So I’m mentioning in more just this sort of volume that goes on.

03:56
Speaker 3
Yeah.

03:58
Speaker 2
So I think, yeah, the Courier Guy as a company courier is incredibly competitive. It’s driven by mechanisation optimisation. Making sure that they don’t have to handle that package by hand because that’s expensive and also get lost if someone’s walking around with it. So, as any company that’s growing, they’ve built a facility that has got equipment in it from Italy, from Germany, from South Africa, from ourselves. All of it’s interconnected and different protocols. Different, different protocols. It’s very time-dependent. So when you’re processing on the line, current line, four, five thousand packages an hour, it means you need to have up-to-date information that’s. And it’s not just knowing where the package is. It’s barcode, it’s length, width, height, weight, what else is in there?

05:03
Speaker 3
Where it.

05:04
Speaker 2
Went, where it’s destined to go. So there’s 600 possible destinations inside the one facility. So you’re tracking a lot of information live from very disparate data sources and.

05:17
Speaker 1
A fairly hefty database assists in the background.

05:19
Speaker 2
So, a big database sitting in the background and Ignition provided the right platform for that. It would be in a. It all sort of comes down to money in the end, I suppose it would be incredibly expensive to do this with any other package.

05:37
Speaker 1
Okay.

05:38
Speaker 2
Because we can pull all this information together and distribute it.

05:43
Speaker 1
Okay.

05:45
Speaker 2
So in. To give you an idea. Yeah. We use Beckhoff IPC hardware as our warehouse control system. Really high-speed processing. We search through a couple of hundred thousand entries every half a second. So we have a, that is our control system, warehouse control system. And then we use Siemens PLCs at the lower level, really for the control.

06:19
Speaker 1
So Skills. Barcode scanners and the big database, we refer to that sitting in the background, Correct?

06:25
Speaker 2
Yeah. And really. So this application, when Courier Guy approached us, is really. It’s a bulk information application. There’s. There are approximately 4,000 packages now just through the one. The one part of the system we’re talking about today. And every time something happens to that package, because everyone sitting out here wants to know, they want to go and track and trace Courier Guy. Where’s my package? Is it in the facility? Out of facility? In the Bucky. Has the bakkie delivered it? So there are approximately four events inside the facility per package. So. So you’re doing 4,000 an hour, but you’ve got 16,000 events happening on that package. So it’s been a. It’s been an interesting learning curve.

07:10
Speaker 1
I thought you maybe had the architecture there.

07:13
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think. Well, I put some. A couple of videos in there.

07:17
Speaker 1
Yeah.

07:19
Speaker 2
So you can.

07:20
Speaker 3
Yeah, just go to the next slide.

07:21
Speaker 2
You want to go.

07:23
Speaker 1
Oh, there we go.

07:24
Speaker 2
So actually should have introduced us in the beginning. So I’m. Dirk is supposed to be making this presentation. He said to me he’s not doing it well, he’s on the stage. So I said to him, well, there’s no way I’m sitting on my own. You need to come and take ownership for the work you’ve done. None of what you see here was done by me. It was done by Dirk and a bunch of competent guys in a team.

07:50
Speaker 1
Amazing.

07:50
Speaker 2
So, yeah, please don’t ask me any questions.

07:53
Speaker 1
Do you want to talk us through the architecture quick? Not really. Okay. All right. All right. Okay, so we’ll give everybody 10 seconds to read through it.

08:05
Speaker 3
We’ve got a big variety of different protocols and instruments and devices that all need to come to one central hub of information. We’ve got the back of IO that controls basically our instrument interface to the WCS, which is where all the information comes from. Where should a package go? Okay, where has it been, where it needs to go, that gets sent to us and we need to somehow display that information as well as control the entire site system, every motor. Like we said, there are a thousand motors that need to be controlled, know when there’s a fault on any of the motors, know if there’s a sensor misaligned, know if a package is stuck somewhere. Wow. So we need that information as well. Then we need. We’ve got our own DWS system, which does the dimensioning, the weight and scans the barcodes.

09:00
Speaker 3
We need that information; we need to store it somewhere. And then this is not a Greenfields project. It was an existing site. So there’s a massive sorter in the middle of the site that we still need to somehow give a central location for the client to have all that information in one spot. So all that information we’re able to pull through to Ignition.

09:21
Speaker 1
What was the duration for the project? Kind of start to finish?

09:26
Speaker 2
April to October. April to October. This is from April to October. This is four months.

09:30
Speaker 1
Okay.

09:32
Speaker 2
There are a couple of things on the. When we get to the displays. Dirk said, I’m not allowed to say this, but I’m going to say it. In any case, we officially broke Ignition on this project.

09:42
Speaker 1
That’s impossible. So Dirk, you were saying.

09:46
Speaker 2
So what we did. One of the things is fast implementation.

09:50
Speaker 1
Yes.

09:51
Speaker 2
And Dirk created a self-drawing skater.

09:54
Speaker 1
Yes.

09:55
Speaker 2
So when you load the page, we have a whole lot of standard modules, and those standard modules look at the endpoint of the previous one, and they draw the conveyor system.

10:07
Speaker 3
It makes rolling out a lot quicker.

10:10
Speaker 2
Yeah. So we just. We just set a tag in the PLC. We just defined what it is. Is it a straight, a curve, an incline? And it rolls it out. So.

10:18
Speaker 1
So those shapes were pre. Pre-configured and pre-built.

10:22
Speaker 2
Okay.

10:23
Speaker 1
All right.

10:24
Speaker 2
It’s two things. It makes the loading of the pages. When I say we broke it. It’s. It’s fairly intense.

10:34
Speaker 1
But just buy a bigger PC. I mean, buy something decent.

10:37
Speaker 2
You. Which I. Which I’ll get to just now about PCs. This is quite a rough industry. You don’t want to put PCs down here. Things get. Yeah, things get broken. So. But what it does is it got us through the proof of concept phase very quickly. So we could present something to our client in very early on in the project. Get buy-in.

10:56
Speaker 1
Yes.

10:56
Speaker 2
Okay. And it’s. So the final implementation, we didn’t. It doesn’t self-draw every time you. Of course, you look at the Skater page.

11:05
Speaker 1
But that’s. Yeah. Very, very innovative.

11:08
Speaker 2
So can we. Is this a video? Is it possible to. Sorry, if we go back just.

11:14
Speaker 3
I just want to. On the. On the roll out. So we had. Before we got to Ignition, before we even knew what Ignition was. We were trying different SCADA softwares and the unnamed scatter software.

11:27
Speaker 1
Please.

11:29
Speaker 3
We tried to use it for a site that went on hold eventually, and by the time the site came back, we forgot what the software was. But we’re using. We didn’t want to use any more, but we didn’t have a choice. We already bought the license, so we sent it to the site with the commissioning engineer. And the first day is like, he can’t use the software. We need a different plan. The software is not rigged.

11:51
Speaker 1
Okay.

11:51
Speaker 3
And we made a call to switch to the Edge license quickly, and our skater technician rolled out the entire skater from scratch. And I think about eight hours the next morning, send the backup to the engineering commissioner’s site from that scatter.

12:08
Speaker 1
Amazing.

12:09
Speaker 3
So rolling out is a lot quicker than what we’re used to.

12:11
Speaker 1
Yeah. Because of the. Because of the body of work that you did up front.

12:14
Speaker 2
Yes.

12:14
Speaker 1
Yeah. Amazing.

12:16
Speaker 2
So that the central part of that SCADA screen is. Is not actually running on our control system. That’s being pulled in from an OEM’s control system. So I think that’s again, just one of the reasons we use Ignition as a platform is because we can pull that info in. I think there’s a screen later where we actually pull the entire skate in as well. So we’ve pulled the raw info in to give the operator a view and we’ve also pulled their skater in. And by the way, we are. We don’t do grayscale. This is very much courier, guys. A customer. If you’ve ever seen any of the adverts, they are in your face, they didn’t want anything grey. That thing must be. It must be green when it’s running, red when it’s faulted. So this is. Yeah, this is one of the tracking pages.

13:05
Speaker 2
And you can see the events are actually sitting in the columns. I said there were four events. There are more than four events per package. So that’s one of the screens. You can actually go inside their facility and do what we would call track and trace some of the stats. It’s. It’s really important to a customer like this. You’ll see they’ve got total no reads. Total no bags, total no destinations.

13:29
Speaker 1
That is their KPIs.

13:31
Speaker 2
It’s their KPI that someone hand carrying that package. You know, when you 1% on. On 10,000 packages, it’s a lot of packages you hand-carry. So there’s again, you’ve just actually pulled someone else’s skater.

13:43
Speaker 1
Okay. In a frame.

13:44
Speaker 2
In a frame into our SCADA system. It gives them one place to operate their entire facility, one screen as opposed to multiple dashboards. And here, this is now going down into OEM barcode scanner equipment, where we have now pulled in live images. So if that updates. So you can actually see a live barcode.

14:07
Speaker 3
Scanning, you might see your own package there somewhere.

14:10
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah, just check for the. Check for your career guard number there, if you can pick it up. So you know. Awesome. This is actually used a lot for operator training because it’s how you present the barcode so the guys can see live what. What’s going through their system? So yeah, I think. Oh, this is the one. This is why we eventually this was the kicker as to using Ignition. We needed to put into place 26 of these screens to operate in an intensive environment. They break these. They break probably one a week. You don’t want to spend a lot of money on it. And that’s an Android tablet. So we have them almost as a consumable on-site. And I know that sounds. But, but it is. We don’t. You don’t try, and we don’t try to repair them. You don’t try and replace them.

15:01
Speaker 2
They got five in the store. They break one, they put one in. Dirk’s done some really nifty stuff in the background where we can see which IP address it’s on, and we load the right page.

15:12
Speaker 1
Amazing.

15:13
Speaker 3
So it’s a plug and play solution.

15:15
Speaker 1
Yeah.

15:15
Speaker 3
Break one.

15:16
Speaker 1
Yeah.

15:16
Speaker 2
Quickly back on and no downtime. Yeah. So they back up. That’s actually a Beckoff physio screen that’s been pulled in.

15:26
Speaker 1
Okay.

15:26
Speaker 2
Again, just more of the same sort of theme.

15:29
Speaker 1
We provide that single interface for everything.

15:32
Speaker 2
Yeah. So this, we sell these as a, a piece of machinery. So that’s why it’s not on. On. On edge or on Ignition. But we just integrated. We pull the data straight through.

15:47
Speaker 3
Yeah.

15:47
Speaker 1
Amazing. Very, very nice. Well done, Dirk. That’s a great job. Any questions for these guys? Any technical. Oh, there’s a question right there.

16:01
Speaker 4
How. I see using Microsoft SQL there. Are you also historizing in a historian database? So you actually combine the two data.

16:10
Speaker 1
Using Microsoft SQL and are we also historizing into another database?

16:16
Speaker 3
So yes, we’re using the Microsoft SQL to capture information from the various sources that we can. And then we’re also historizing some of our stats to that database to just show them how much parcels has been processed. So we use it both as a historian and as a tracker.

16:35
Speaker 1
Okay.

16:36
Speaker 2
And this is a difficult application for a pure historian. And the reason is it’s discrete entries. It’s not, it’s not time data. You, you’ve. It’s. They are discrete entries per package.

16:53
Speaker 1
Perfect single.

16:54
Speaker 2
Yeah. And we update an entry so we don’t create a new entry when we update that package’s status. So it’s. Yeah, not a pure historian.

17:05
Speaker 4
Application, but your PLC tags. Is that also going to the SQL, or are you historizing that?

17:13
Speaker 2
So we, in this instance we don’t historize the data from all those tags. The. The reason is that the volume of information is just massive. So we run their facility in a slightly different way on things like run hours on motors. So we don’t do a lot of historizing on individual motor temperatures. For example, we just go through, we have a scan and we go through that facility once every 24 hours and go through all the motor run hours, log all of the motor run hours and check which ones are due for servicing, due for replacement. So slightly, I mean it’s a very good question. We did look at it and just the volumes of information, and also what we’re going to get out of it. I think it’s.

18:05
Speaker 2
There’s a decision there on how much you have to store versus the value of it, relatively, compared to heavy industry. Each of these motors is relatively cheap compared to heavy industry. So you’re into much more of a sort of replace and service rather than. Or it’s predictive maintenance with replace rather than service in place. Predictive maintenance. Does that answer the question?

18:35
Speaker 1
Good question. Right. Gents, thank you so much. Appreciate your time. Give me a round of applause. Oh yes, there is a question, sorry.

18:47
Speaker 3
Mobile application.

18:51
Speaker 5
In this project or another project?

18:53
Speaker 1
Sorry, just repeat that again.

18:55
Speaker 5
So he said at the beginning that you guys sell mobile applications for Ignition, right? So was it with this project, another project? Why you guys tend to move away from mobility?

19:06
Speaker 1
So part of Perspective is one of the types of clients that you have is a mobile. Is the app client. So that’s. You can either do workstation mode or you could use just a web browser via a web browser on any device. And the third type of client is via the native app, which you can download from your Apple Store or your Google Play Store. So that app we often, when we showcase and do different demos, we often show the demo on the phone because it uses the app on the phone. And the app on the phone also allows you to use the phone’s auxiliary features, such as location services, you can take a photo, and all of that data lives inside of Ignition. So. So that’s the mobile portion.