Partnership with Insurance Pioneer Results in a Solution in the Area of Loss Prediction

The first predictive solutions on the Polish insurance market, allowing to predict and thus avoid damages, have started to be offered and successively implemented by Ergo Hestia. 

Its proposed Smart Control system was based on proven devices, communication protocols and software provided by the domestic company Blulog, which for several years has been one of the leaders in the area of wireless monitoring of storage and transport conditions for food and pharmaceutical products.

Ergo Hestia has set its sights on monitoring facilities and equipment in manufacturing plants and service buildings. It is in these types of facilities that the greatest property damage occurs, often resulting in long-term business downtime. That’s why Ergo Hestia’s engineers are installing sensors in sensitive areas such as electrical switchgear, cooling towers, server rooms, and motors and bearings – where a damage incident can occur. 

A separate category is made up of small service facilities, such as pharmacies, doctors’ offices, stores and restaurants, for which Ergo Hestia has prepared dedicated self-installation packages. They usually consist of several temperature and humidity loggers and a “made by Blulog” hub.

Smart Control System

Smart Control is Ergo Hestia’s wireless risk monitoring system, the purpose of which is to identify and alert on all kinds of anomalies in operating parameters or environmental conditions that may indicate an “impending” damage incident. Adequate information at the right time enables appropriate preventive measures to be taken. 

The system owes its effectiveness to Ergo Hestia’s advanced risk engineering expertise and Blulog’s technological solutions. Conceptual work, exchange of experience and joint testing of solutions allowed the creation of the first dedicated tool on the Polish insurance market “detecting damage that hasn’t happened yet.” Smart Control is an attractive technological solution for risk-conscious customers, available as part of an insurance policy.

How Does Smart Control Work?

As part of the Smart Control system, Blulog wireless loggers record in real time the operating parameters of key devices and the conditions present in the premises – such as temperature, voltage and humidity. All data via Blulog hubs are instantly transmitted to the Smart Control platform, where accurate analysis and data visualization takes place. 

Customers using the SMART Control system have a constant view of the operating parameters of monitored devices and objects. In a situation where the system registers the occurrence of even minor anomalies in the monitored devices, a notification is immediately sent. Thanks to this early information, the customer has time to verify and take action.

– Our experience in designing IoT for companies from all over the world, operating in various sectors, has allowed us to build a product and know-how that can be easily implemented in any industry and wherever there is a need to measure important parameters as part of the production, storage or transportation process that can cause losses – product loss or spoilage, equipment failure, etc. 

Most importantly, we provide APIs so our solutions can be easily adapted to most existing monitoring systems in the company and infinitely scaled to its needs and growth. The know-how is our creation, but it is the customer who builds the final product tailored to his needs. Thanks to the components we provide, this process is extremely easy, concludes Zbigniew Bigaj, co-founder and head of R&D at Blulog.

Results

Although the system has only been implemented for 2 years, it has already contributed to the detection of more than a dozen situations of imminent danger to people, facilities, equipment and working capital. It was only thanks to the quick reaction of the staff that serious losses were avoided.

– To date, we have installed more than 3,500 loggers at 160 customers insured with Ergo Hestia. The system monitors key premises and equipment such as electrical switchgear or motors, reporting potential deviations from standard values, often just before or at the time of a damage event. 

Thanks to our proprietary data analysis solutions, we can detect even minor anomalies, the consequence of which can be serious property damage and long-term production downtime, admits Hubert Karpiński, Smart Control development manager at Ergo Hestia.

LST Incident

The incident occurred at LST, which has deployed loggers at its plant to monitor key motors and electrical switchgear and the server room:

– A reactive power capacitor in an electrical switchgear caught fire. Thanks to the quick response, the most unfavorable scenario was avoided. The switchgear was quickly shut down, which helped limit the extent of the property damage. Fortunately, there was no interruption of operations at our plant. 

I should add that the waiting time alone for the replacement of such a transformer station today is about 6-8 months. If the fire had been transferred to other parts of the plant, the value of the damage could have amounted to several million zlotys, admits Roman Maciąg, director of LST Polska.

– This is not the first situation in which our customers have managed to avoid serious damage thanks to Smart Control. We have already recorded dangerous situations not only in switchgears, but also in server rooms and in electric motors on which the production process depended, adds Marcin Czepczyński, Smart Control technical manager at Ergo Hestia.