\
unitronics logo

How do you
Manage Services for Automated Solutions?

When Unitronics came to Commit for an IoT solution, they got more than just software development, communication engineering or hardware integration. They found a technological partner whose managed services improved everything they could offer their clients.

Automating Manufacturers Around the Globe

Automating Manufacturers Around the Globe

Unitronics designs, manufactures, and markets advanced control and automation solutions. Their extensive offering includes a complete line of Programmatic Logical Controllers (PLCs) and complementary devices, as well as programming software for all aspects of control, motion, HMI, and communications. Their PLCs range from micro-level units for simple machine control to complex controllers with advanced functions, a variety of onboard IOs and multiple communication options – including support for Industry 4.0 (smart factory) technology. Easy to use, efficient, and affordable, their products have been automating processes, systems and standalone applications since 1989. Today, their field-proven products automate over 1 million installations in diverse fields, including petrochemicals, automotive, food processing, plastics & textiles, energy & environment, water & wastewater management – anywhere automated processes are required. Unitronics is represented by more than 180 distributors in over 60 countries around the globe, providing our customers with local support in their local languages.

The Challenge
Controlling the Controllers

Unitronics designs, manufactures, and markets advanced control and automation solutions. Their extensive offering includes a complete line of Programmatic Logical Controllers (PLCs) and complementary devices, as well as programming software for all aspects of control, motion, HMI, and communications. Their PLCs range from micro-level units for simple machine control to complex controllers with advanced functions, a variety of onboard IOs and multiple communication options – including support for Industry 4.0 (smart factory) technology. Easy to use, efficient, and affordable, their products have been automating processes, systems and standalone applications since 1989. Today, their field-proven products automate over 1 million installations in diverse fields, including petrochemicals, automotive, food processing, plastics & textiles, energy & environment, water & wastewater management – anywhere automated processes are required. Unitronics is represented by more than 180 distributors in over 60 countries around the globe, providing our customers with local support in their local languages. 

The Solution
Combining IoT and the Cloud

Commit’s designed and delivered a robust, well-architected AWS cloud solution – UniCloud – which is easy to use, while providing high levels of security and privacy, full availability and accessibility, as well as scalability. Needs defined included fast onboarding for new users and accounts, multi-platform support, data privacy (GDPR) compliance and more.The entire solution required utilization and integration of smart technologies deployed in manufacturing settings. The IoT devices, whose hardware, software and communications were not only designed and delivered but also integrated by Commit’s embedded technologies experts, collect real-time information from the field, allowing for the collection of tags data from the IoT controller devices. Based on these tag values, the system triggers alerts and actions.In addition, two types of analytical tools were set up: a BI tool for Unitronics administrators/superusers and an Ml/AI system which utilizes predictive maintenance algorithms for customers’ machine builders and end-users. This required a secure setting, with tenancy defined properly, as well as the establishment of an ETL process that would provide a constantly updated single source of truth for each client.To make the solution accessible an operational portal was created, to allow end-users and machine builders to monitor their projects and billing information. These work hand in hand with Unitronics’ CRM and its public facing websites. Also, for proper support by the Unitronics team, an array of ticket management system, infrastructure monitoring tools, and central log management was established.

monitoring and support icon

Keeping an Eye Out
Monitoring & Support

The comprehensive managed services solution proposed by Commit covered a large array of services: Network Operations Center (NOC), Security Operations Center (SOC), DevOps and backup and recovery. This extensive suite is hosted on AWS and utilizes its cutting-edge services. By monitoring the tenants’ performance and security status, problems are identified early and handled quickly, often before they have any real impact on the tenant users. Both AWS CloudWatch and 3rd party Datadog tool implemented for this monitoring.

Benefits & Outcomes icon

Benefits & Outcomes

Most importantly, the UniCloud solution was a new solution which provided Unitronics with a new line of services offered to their customers while providing increased manageability, usage tracking and serviceability for Unitronics’ PLC customers. Other benefits included the fact that by providing high availability on the cloud at all levels, the system provides reliability which Unitronics’ clients need to monitor and manage their devices remotely, and that full compartmentalization of each UniCloud account alongside implementing GDPR guidelines allows Unitronics to provide UniCloud services to customers from any market and industry sector.