Since 2008, Ikhaya Automation Systems has been delivering comprehensive temperature monitoring solutions. With a diverse range of use case scenarios ranging from industrial and commercial, to medical and pharmaceutical, remote temperature control enables businesses to keep their products under strict control while complying with governing body regulations. Ikhaya is one of only two companies in South Africa that are approved and audited by WHO to monitor the transport and protection of pharmaceutical products. Ikhaya ships products to countries running the WHO and UNICEF vaccine programmes. The vaccines require strict temperature monitoring in refrigerators used for transport.
Given the nature of the Ikhaya business, its success is dependent on access to mission-critical data. Pharmaceutical companies, retail food suppliers, and cold chain transporters are held to high standards of quality, with the risk of losing millions from even a single container of spoiled vaccinations or fresh produce.
Businesses like Ikhaya must comply with strict legislative requirements that require historical evidence of temperature logs, and sometimes even humidity and pressure logs, to prove the integrity of their produce. If a vehicle loses the ability to monitor the temperature of its trailer for just an hour, produce is at risk of being spoiled. For higher value assets like vaccines, not having the ability to monitor or remotely control the temperature has dire consequences on the viability of the product and can have significant consequences for people’s lives.
With Ikhaya’s products and services, businesses are able to monitor temperatures remotely, configure thresholds and alerts, and even set trigger-based rules to change the temperature when needed. Ikhaya has built its own specialised hardware that is able to track temperature in real time from the source.
The nature of Ikhaya’s business case requires rigorous global solution standards. Every element of Ikhaya’s solution has to be online at all times, monitored and tightly controlled. To this end, Ikhaya entered into a managed connectivity partnership with Trinity IoT that extended beyond just the supply of SIM cards.
With Trinity, all Ikhaya SIMs are provisioned through the Trinity APN. This enabled the customer to use SIMs from more than one mobile network provider, while benefitting from having all the data go through the same access point. Furthermore, Trinity provided Ikhaya with complete network visibility through the Trinity Connect unified online platform. This empowers Ikhaya to drill down into all aspects of their connectivity and IoT hardware ecosystem. In doing so, the organisation can rule out potential problem areas in these components to quickly address any operational concerns.
Ikhaya now has access to the required data to draw reports and ensure remote temperature monitoring adheres to WHO requirements. Even though Ikhaya did not require IoT hardware or endpoints from Trinity for this project, Trinity worked closely with the organisation to develop a comprehensive solution that could be retrofitted into their business without causing any disruption.
More recently, the partnership has been expanded to include a manufacturer of refrigerated trailers. This has resulted in Ikhaya doing a significant amount of cold chain transport for customers. One of the customer bases of refrigerated trailers comes through SERCO and the SPAR Group. Here the technology monitors not only the temperature, but also parameters such as axle load, air pressure, brake pressure, odometer reading, and engine revolutions. Every time one of Ikhaya’s customers wants to track a refrigerated shipment, Trinity enables them to do so.
Real-time temperature monitoring has become mandatory in several industries. Using manual temperature recordings and keeping manual logs can result in errors coming into the process. This human-driven approach can result in potential fraudulent data. Trinity empowered Ikhaya to address its business requirement for real-time temperature monitoring with a fully automated, remote temperature monitoring solution. This underpins how Trinity’s technology stack can enable companies like Ikhaya to become more innovative in their business development, with the connectivity environment taken care of. Fundamentally, Trinity is an IoT enablement partner that takes care of the resource-intensive, risky operational components of IoT implementation. This enables organisations to focus more on decreasing their product’s time to market. With Trinity, innovative companies like Ikhaya can continue to focus on their core business, while Trinity seamlessly runs the core operational infrastructure in the background.
Ikhaya is looking to expand into the US and European markets. Backed by the WHO, they know their solution quality is of the highest standard and can pass international regulations. Ikhaya benefits from Trinity as the technology provides them with ease of deployment, a complete portal oversight management function, and having to spend less time analysing data and more time delivering strategic solutions that matter.
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