IoT Integration Platform

Case Study

Monitoring of Beetroot State and

Storage Conditions
Partner
Rusagro Group

Hardware
Testing equipment supporting non-standard communication protocol
only with temperature, pressure, CO2 and GPS/GLONASS sensors.

Information Systems Industry:

• ASP:Svekla based on 1C:Enterprise 8.2 application Agriculture
• Online OpenWeatherMap service

Rusagro Company Profile

Rusagro Group is one of the largest vertically-integrated agriculture and
food production holding companies in Russia. The holding can be divided
into four key segments: agriculture, sugar, meat, oil and fats. The sugar
business is one of the core Rusagro Group operation areas. As reported in
2018, the company managed to increase its sugar plants capacity up to 53
850 t of beetroot per day, thus ranking third among sugar-producers in
Russia today. The high efficiency of Rusagro plants is achieved through
investments into production modernization aimed at reduction of costs and
facilities expansion for sugar beet processing.

Challenges
Before putting into production, sugar beet is stored on a pile field, which is an open concrete ground
divided into piles. A pile is basically raw material stacked in the shape of a truncated pyramid 350 m
long, 18-20 m wide, and 5-6 m high. In its turn, every pile has several sections for efficient pile
forming control and further materials handling in production.
There are 2 types of vehicles with GPS/GLONASS trackers employed on a pile field: a pile forming
machine transporting beet from the dump site to a pile, and a pushdozer dropping some beet off to a
water channel for its further transportation to the sugar plant. Thus, it’s essential to keep track of the
machinery on the field to make the best use of it.
One more critical task was to proactively monitor raw material temperature for spotting the so-called
affected areas where rotting processes could start. For this purpose, the pile field was equipped with
testing devices having temperature sensors at 3 different height levels, as well as pressure, humidity,
CO2 and GPS/GLONASS sensors. The sensors communicate data to the gate via LoRaWAN wireless
network. The gate works in transparent bridge mode between LoRaWAN and IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi)
networks and sends the ASCII data stream inside TCP connection to the IEEE 802.11 network
segment. This equipment was specifically designed for the project.

ASP: Svekla
GPS/GLONASS
AggreGate
Vehicle Tracking
SaaS

OpenWeatherMap Sensor Network

The project implied a set of requirements for IoT Platform:

• SaaS-based soſtware platform available only several months a year during the beet storage
season. Otherwise, it should stop monitoring and get all data archived
• User-friendly web interface supporting smartphones and tablets, as well as providing drill-down
analysis important for business analysts and technologists
• Rapid non-standard communication protocol development
• Easy data collection from different sources, so as to integrate, analyze, and correlate various data
sets
• E-mail notifications and SMS sending via the mobile operator SMS gateway using SMPP protocol
• Real-time and history GPS/GLONASS vehicle tracking
• Easy integration with third-party applications and services, such as 1C:Enterprise application and
OpenWeatherMap service
AggreGate IoT Platform had all required features available out-of-the-box, so Tibbo team keenly got
down to implement the project.
Beyond that, sugar amount in the beet decreases over time. Weather conditions, especially air
temperature and humidity, greatly influence processes taking place in the piles outdoors. To reduce
losses and increase the profits, it is critical to know both current amount of sugar in beetroot and its
predicted values in every pile section.
For completing these tasks, Rusagro IT department entirely relied on Tibbo Systems. They needed to
implement the system for monitoring beet state and storage conditions on a quite tight schedule.

Solution
By the end of the first implementation week, AggreGate IoT Platform started processing data
received from the field sensors, while data was relayed via a non-standard protocol. AggreGate team
designed and implemented the hierarchical tree-like field-pile-section model with sets of attributes
describing each object, plus business rules for data processing.
Moreover, the Platform integrated with already existing ASP:Svekla application via web services and
OpenWeatherMap via API for getting access to weather data, including current temperature, humidity
and forecasts. Thus, the information collected from the field sensors was enriched with additional
data.
Just at the implementation stage, AggreGate IoT Platform managed to identify and eliminate several
affected areas, while the collected data was used by Rusagro technologists for further analysis.
Having analyzed the whole data array from various sources and using its predictive analytics tools,
the Platform made it possible to identify values of critical importance, such as beet keeping period
considering weather forecasts, sugar amount trend in a particular pile section, etc.
Rusagro immediately benefited from the deployed solution which helped to improve their overall
storage strategy and meet the challenges faced by the company.
Today, AggreGate IoT Platform provides real-time and holistic view of all processes occurring on the
pile field. Pile sections and field sensors are visualized as geo-fences on a multi-layer GIS map sup-
porting scaling and real-time changes. Depending on the temperature level and sugar amount, the
Platform provides color-coded indication on the map. The system perfectly tracks failures, ensures
root-cause analysis with map visualization and SMS or E-mail notifications. Customized set of alerts
allows the system to automatically monitor equipment and raw material state failures. As for SMS
notifications, they are sent via one of the mobile operator’s SMS gateway using SMPP protocol.

Benefits
Aſter implementing GPS/GLONASS vehicle tracking, dispatchers optimized the machinery
performance by coordinating a pile forming machine and a pushdozer operation in the field. Historical
tracking data visualized on maps gave Rusagro analysts a lot of information to reflect on.
Eventually, AggreGate IoT Platform let Rusagro team follow up the trends of beet sugar amount
decrease on every single pile section and stop rotting processes. This revealed insights into which
raw material parts to select and when exactly they should be sent into production for maximal sugar
yield, and consequent growth of profits.
Conclusion
The system users may easily view both current situation on the pile field and forecasts, as well as drill
down to historical or detailed data on a certain pile section or piece of equipment when necessary by
clicking on the objects.
Aſter implementation of the system in the production facilities, beet storage and handling conditions
have been significantly optimized, which highly increased economic indices.
Now Rusagro Group has a chance to reproduce the solution in their multiple plants, while extend and
scale up the deployed AggreGate IoT Platform functionality facing the future with confidence.

About Tibbo
Located in Taipei, Taiwan, Tibbo Technology Inc. brings simplicity to the automation world defined by
enormous complexity of operating systems, programming languages, and design tools. Tibbo’s
programmable hardware and the AggreGate Platform offer a complete solution for delivering robust,
distributed automation and monitoring systems.

Tibbo Technology Inc.

web: aggregate.tibbo.com email: sales@tibbo.com
phone: +886-2-26925443 fax: +886-2-26923139
Tibbo Technology Inc., 9F-3, No.31, Lane 169, Kang-Ning St., Hsi-Chih, Taipei, Taiwan 221