Definium Technologies expands to build Coates IoT devices

Invermay, Tasmania IoT device company Definium Technologies has completed shipment of its largest-ever device order to leading equipment hire company Coates.

The order more than doubled staff numbers at the company and involved the installation and upgrading of surface mount technology and machinery, according to CEO Mike Cruse.

Cruse said Coates engaged Definium to design and manufacture an asset monitoring device that met their requirements exactly.

After building prototypes and field testing Coates said that they would like to have 12,500 units manufactured over 12-18 months, starting with an initial order of 5,000 units.

Cruse said: “As you might imagine, there were a number of exciting challenges with a project of this size.

“This single project stimulated a great deal of growth for Definium and is responsible for nearly doubling our staff and adding significant upgrades to our surface mount assembly production line.”

Definium has designed dozens of IoT devices optimised for deployment at scale and supporting a wide array of IoT communications options, including LoRaWAN (gateways and nodes), LTE Cat M1 (eMTC), LTE Cat NB1 (NB-IoT), Ethernet, and low earth orbit satellite (Myriota, Iridium).

Cruse said: “We managed to perform all the PCB assembly work for this order in about five and a half days.

“From the time that we received all of the remaining mechanical components, we (completed) the firmware loading, testing, final mechanical assembly, packing and shipping in about six weeks.

“The metric I like to use is that towards the end we were shipping a tonne of IoT devices every 2-3 days.

“I was the first time that we needed a forklift to load our products on to a truck – that has to be a milestone of sorts.”

According to IoT product owner at Coates, Joshua Tompkins some unique design features make the Coates telemetry device stand out from other products that are available today.

Tompkins said: “Speed of installation was an important factor in the selection of this design.

“Installing Coates bespoke telemetry device across our entire fleet is expected to save the equivalent of 12 years of labour, compared to using some of the popular off-the-shelf products.

“But the original Coates brief called for a device that could be installed in 15 minutes or less and we’re already averaging under 10 minutes.

“As we gain momentum, I expect that time could drop to as little as five minutes.”

A scannable data matrix code on the external housing for each device is creating additional efficiencies by eliminating the need to manually enter the serial numbers for each device.

Tompkins said: “Using our in-house maintenance app MyFleet, this matrix allows each device to be very quickly mapped and associated with the piece of equipment it will be installed on, shaving even more time off installation.

But the last word goes to Definium’s Cruse: “It is pretty nice to be able to demonstrate this kind of capability in Tasmania and Launceston in particular.”

Picture: Definium Technologies

Subscribe to our free @AuManufacturing newsletter here.