(Photo: Forklift in use at a Lineage Logistics storage facility. Credit: AT&T IoT)Cold food storage operator Lineage Logistics collaborated with AT&T Internet of Things and industrial energy optimization company Ndustrial.io on installing smart meters and sensors to store more food and increase energy efficiency at their facilities. The new system lowered annual energy spend by $4 million.
AT&T IoT and Ndustrial.io teamed up to help the food warehousing and distribution company, which operates more than 120 warehouses in 26 states and four countries. Last year Lineage handled over 35 billion pounds of consumer packaged goods, meat, seafood, fruits, vegetables, and other food products, according to an AT&T IoT case study.
Most of the company’s facilities need to keep temperatures at zero degrees, which meant that their electricity bills were costing tens of millions of dollars.
“Our ultimate goal was to do more with less by increasing the amount of food per cubic foot in our facilities while lowering energy usage,” Sudarsan Thattai, chief information officer of Lineage Logistics told Energy Manager Today. “We knew we needed a solution that could monitor usage at detailed levels and in real time to give us the insights we needed to lower costs and electricity usage.”
Ndustrial.io installed smart meters and approximately 1,000 sensors connected by the AT&T Internet of Things to better measure temperature and humidity, A&T explained.
“By integrating AT&T global SIMs and utilizing the AT&T Control Center, an automated connectivity management platform, Ndustrial.io was able to send time-sensitive data from the warehouses to the analytics engine in the cloud with high security,” the case study says.
With precise temperature information, Lineage could increase shelf utilization for food storage and maintain the correct temperature. AT&T noted that, by having continuous insight into the temperatures on each shelf and comparing this information to these “set points,” the system can signal for the chiller systems and variable frequency drives to turn on and off as needed.
The IoT system optimizes the space and electricity used for each item by incorporating the temperature data and the racking system’s dimensional data. Lineage’s data show that, since 2014, yearly energy costs declined 8% at the 78 warehouses where the system has been installed. Throughput increased during the same time period, meaning that the cost of electricity used for each item of food actually decreased by 34%.
“The impact of the solution on our business and our environmental footprint has been remarkable,” Thattai said. “Had we not made the operational changes identified by the system, our electricity usage since 2014 would have increased by over 600 million kWh, which is equal to consuming more than 37 million gallons of gasoline.”
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