Lexmark
Assembly Line
Lexmark prints plan to help manufacturers deploy industrial IoT
From its experience in connected and managed printing environments, the Lexington, Kentucky, company has built IoT and edge computing expertise it is using to help clients in a variety of industries, the most recent of which is a fellow Lexington firm, the colorfully but appropriately named Big Ass Fans (BAF). The latter company recently announced CommandSense, described as an automated comfort ecosystem for industrial settings that uses sensors and IoT technology, along with Lexmark’s Optra IoT and Optra IoT edge platforms to create a controlled cooling system designed to reduce heat stress while improving worker safety and lowering energy costs for industrial facilities.
BAF provides the brawn of CommandSense, with sensors that continuously monitor occupancy, humidity, temperature, and other facility conditions to automatically adjust fans, heaters, and ventilation fans as needed. Meanwhile, Lexmark brings the brains, with Optra IoT, an IoT platform with data processing, analytics, AI and machine learning capabilities, and Optra Edge, which executes IoT data processing and AI applications at the edge, closer to the point of data collection, providing an ability to analyze sensor data such as sight, sound, vibration, and temperature, and enable real-time decisions, without edge-to-cloud latency being an issue.
BAF’s CommandSense will be available in April 2025. In the meantime. Lexmark is working with several other clients on their own IoT journeys. Another example is a medical equipment manufacturer that has thousands of its imaging devices deployed in doctors’ offices around the world, and wants to leverage collected data and AI to drive improved customer service.
Manufacturing and Transportation Industry Forum | DAIS 2024
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