Quantify Environmental: Slashing Utility Costs With Ubidots

Context

Who: Quantify Environmental Ltd., located in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, is an innovative sustainability consultancy firm at the forefront of harnessing the power of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) hardware for environmental and industrial efficiency.
What: Their multi-disciplinary team of seasoned environmental scientists and engineers strategically incorporate IIoT hardware into their clients' industrial and commercial facilities to identify operational anomalies and inefficiencies.
How: By leveraging the power of non-invasive, battery-powered, wireless sensors, Quantify Environmental transforms opaque monthly utility usage into tangible, high-resolution data.
For whom: Their core focus lies on the manufacturing, food and beverage, plastics/polymers, and pharmaceutical sectors.

Problem

Quantify Environmental’s clients often approach them with significant challenges related to high monthly utility expenditures —water, electricity, and natural gas— coupled with a lack of visibility into their minute-by-minute consumption patterns. This lack of high-resolution data generally conceals potential opportunities for substantial improvements and cost savings, both at a plant-level and with specific pieces of equipment.

Water consumption dashboard built with Ubidots.

Many of their clients, in an attempt to monitor their utility consumption, had already implemented basic digital dashboards for certain processes. However, these were often basic interfaces that were outdated and offered a poor user experience. They also typically focused on a singular aspect of monitoring. This meant that a plant manager would need to use, learn, and navigate multiple software platforms to monitor different assets or utility streams, which is not only inefficient but also highly time-consuming.

Quantify Environmental's seamless communication setup (LTE hotspot and Edge Computer).

Quantify Environmental’s IoT business model was born out of the realization that many of Canada's manufacturing hubs were gradually losing their competitive edge, particularly those operating in factories that were built in the previous century. These facilities either had no visibility of their resource consumption or relied on outdated analogue metering systems. Slow adoption of powerful, emergent technologies that could provide valuable process metrics, coupled with workforce constraints, meant that many companies lacked the internal capacity to direct resources towards lucrative sustainability projects.

Furthermore, the immense scale of these factories meant that even a single machine could consume more electricity than over 30 individual households. Consequently, their utility bills often exceeded hundreds of thousands of dollars. Any opportunity realized would not only help reduce consumption and costs, but also generate enough savings to cover the cost of Quantify Environmental’s services and technology.

Solution

Boasting a multi-disciplinary team of seasoned environmental scientists and engineers, Quantify Environmental strategically incorporates Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) hardware into their clients' industrial and commercial facilities. Their expertise facilitates the identification of operational anomalies and inefficiencies, paving the way for the introduction of no-cost/low-cost, high-ROI sustainability projects that offer long-term operational and environmental benefits.

While Quantify Environmental extends their services to a wide range of industries, its core focus lies on the manufacturing, food and beverage, plastics/polymers, and pharmaceutical sectors. These industries are particularly crucial given their substantial environmental footprint and the remarkable potential for efficiency enhancements and sustainability improvements. In a world increasingly conscious of environmental responsibility and operational expenditures, they strive to pioneer transformative change through data-driven sustainability.

Industrial sensor used by Quantify Environmental to enable predictive maintenance.

To address these challenges, Quantify Environmental leverages the power of non-invasive, battery-powered, wireless sensors. These cutting-edge tools transform opaque monthly utility usage into tangible, high-resolution data, which they then integrate into a comprehensive and user-friendly digital platform. This approach uncovers hidden trends and pinpoints crucial areas for improvement, demystifying consumption patterns over time and eliminating the need for multiple disparate monitoring systems.

This has been possible thanks to a hardware-agnostic approach that allows Quantify Environmental to successfully respond to their clients’ unique needs and preferences. However, it’s also true that they’ve found a consistent partner in NCD (National Control Devices). NCD’s extensive selection of sensors, coupled with their top-tier quality, ensures Quantify Environmental can always find a suitable match for their clients' specific needs, including the capacity to withstand the demanding environments in which their solutions often operate in.

Water consumption monitoring on Ubidots.

As for the platform, Quantify Environmental has found a pivotal component of their solutions in Ubidots. This versatile tool provides them with the ability to seamlessly integrate a wide array of sensors and hardware from different suppliers, transforming disparate streams of data into cohesive and meaningful insights.

Tom Ulanowski, Co-Founder of Quantify Environmental, remarks that “with Ubidots, we're not just gathering data, we're turning it into valuable information that can be easily visualized and comprehended by our clients”. This rapid, real-time data visualization capability enables their clients to immediately understand consumption patterns, identify anomalies, and make data-driven decisions quickly. Unlike outdated legacy control and monitoring software, Ubidots enables seamless integration of information such as photographs, camera feeds, and easy to read visuals that anyone at a factory can interpret.

Why Ubidots?

The search for an IoT software platform was underpinned by Quantify Environmental’s need for a modern, scalable solution that could accommodate the diverse data streams they deal with, while also allowing them to offer a white-labeled, custom product to their clients.

In their quest to find such a platform, the team at Quantify Environmental considered several factors:

Ease of integration with various IoT hardware
Real-time data visualization capabilities
Scalability
Customization options
The potential for white-labeling

After speaking to some industry contacts and partners, they came across Ubidots and it immediately caught their attention due to its reputation in the industry and its wide array of features that addressed specific requirements.

“Further exploration revealed a platform that was not only robust and reliable, but also extremely user-friendly, offering intuitive data visualization tools that would be easily comprehensible by our clients.”

Tom Ulanowski, MSc, P.Chem/C.Chem, P.Ag. Co-Founder of Quantify Environmental

Ubidots' scalability and versatility, along with its white-labeling capabilities, made it a perfect match for Quantify Environmental’s needs. Being able to seamlessly blend Ubidots with their brand quickly stood out, since this resulted in a fully personalized product that truly reflects their company’s unique needs and objectives.

Energy and emissions monitoring on Ubidots.

For Quantify Environmental, choosing Ubidots was ultimately a strategic decision based on its harmonious blend of robust capabilities and simplicity. Despite its high-capacity and sophisticated features, it maintains an ease of use that both the company and their clients find invaluable. Whether it’s integrating new hardware or extracting data through an API, Ubidots consistently delivers, effectively accommodating Quantify Environmental’s diverse needs.

Another of Ubidots’ standout features, Synthetic Variables, allows Quantify Environmental to engineer new variables using raw data, creating custom parameters that offer unique insights into their clients' consumption patterns. This feature drives their ability to deliver bespoke, data-driven solutions tailored to each client's specific needs.

Water consumption vs. pH levels monitoring on Ubidots.

Finally, data visualization proved to be another key feature of Ubidots. Its ability to transform complex data sets into easily understandable and visually appealing formats significantly aids Quantify Environmental’s consultation process, as it enables their clients to quickly grasp their consumption and operational patterns, equipping them with the necessary insights to make informed, timely decisions.

For instance, having the ability to quickly choose different data timelines has proven to be very powerful. Since all of Quantify Environmental’s sustainability opportunities need to be considered in both real-time and on varying timelines to provide a holistic view, being able to rapidly shift perspective, for example, from a night shift's water use to a six-month water usage overview, allows the company and their clients to intuitively visualize the full narrative of resource use.

Results

Since their inception just over a year ago, Quantify Environmental has experienced a substantial impact on their business, their clients, and the environment as a whole, largely attributable to the powerful solutions provided by Ubidots.

Financially, they've been instrumental in identifying well over $250,000 in annual savings for their clients. This is a significant amount that directly contributes to the bottom line of these businesses, but the benefits go far beyond mere cost savings.

Quantify Environmental’s water meter logging device.

In terms of environmental impact, these savings translate into millions of litres of fresh water conserved and several tonnes of carbon emissions prevented from being released into the atmosphere. The importance of these environmental savings cannot be overstated, given the global emphasis on sustainability and the urgent need to reduce our collective carbon footprint.

For Quantify Environmental’s clients, these savings mean more than just reduced operational costs. They also help businesses meet their environmental and sustainability goals, improve their public image, and comply with increasingly strict environmental regulations. Additionally, the real-time data provided by Ubidots enables their clients to maintain ongoing, proactive oversight of their consumption and emissions.

For the environment at large, these changes contribute to a more sustainable future. By conserving water, reducing emissions, and driving sustainable practices in key industries, Quantify Environmental is helping to protect our planet for future generations.

Tom Ulanowski and Dave Fox, Co-Founders of Quantify Environmental.

In terms of the impact on their company, these successes have helped to establish Quantify Environmental’s reputation as a trusted provider of IoT-powered sustainability solutions. They've witnessed impressive growth and increased interest from a range of industries, which they attribute to their client’s successes and the power of their Ubidots-backed solutions.

Quantify Environmental's solutions have even achieved an unforeseen and exciting result by re-engaging employees at companies as they can now see in real-time the impact they are having on operations. This has improved their personal quality of life, self satisfaction and career development.

The positive feedback and measurable results Quantify Environmental has received from their clients has further strengthened their belief in the effectiveness of their IoT-based approach. They are eager to continue their partnerships with manufacturers, aiding them in harnessing the power of real-time data to boost their sustainability and efficiency, while also lowering operational costs. In doing so, they’re not just validating their business model, but also contributing to a more sustainable future for the industry.

More about Quantify Environmental

Quantify Environmental Ltd., located in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, is an innovative sustainability consultancy firm at the forefront of harnessing the power of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) hardware for environmental and industrial efficiency. They believe that tangible, impactful sustainability and enhanced manufacturing efficiency stem from the diligent utilization of real-time data, which is precisely harvested via state-of-the-art IoT sensors, coupled with detailed onsite measurements and observations.

Interested in contacting Quantify Environmental for your utility management solutions? For business inquiries, reach out to them here.