In the postindustrial period, it is necessary for all businesses to be prepared for any and all challenges. And 2020, a time like no other, has demonstrated the level of companies’ readiness to respond to the challenges, not only from the market, but from the world. Unforeseen global crises can, however, present abrupt changes in economic, legal, work and technological parts of all businesses.

Covid-19 affected everyone and did not bypass Robot System Automation (RSA). Originally, the company focused only on innovative, automated production systems for the footwear industry, but at a certain point, they had to rapidly move in a new business direction to stay competitive in the market and to follow its rules of business during a time of total uncertainty. RSA’s challenge was to keep their doors open. A new customer needed surgical masks and Respirator Type KN95 masks to fight Covid-19. This meant RSA had to start producing “Industry 4.0-Ready” mask manufacturing machines. In order to get fiscal benefits from the Italian tax program, dedicated to companies that transform their industrial process to an “Industry 4.0” process, it had to immediately react to this need. Therefore, RSA was keen to find a reliable Industrial IoT partner with high-quality products and technologies.

The Zerynth team provided Robot System Automation with an IoT system developed to monitor the machinery parameters remotely for mask production.

The steady-state system architecture provides each machine with its own installed Edge Device. It allows monitoring heterogeneous data sources to collect machinery status data (on/off/waiting/production in progress), estimate the energy consumption of the machinery, and control operating speeds.

RSA successfully completed its industrial optimization for a new business line thanks to its collaboration with Zerynth. The project is definitely a phenomenal success since, in only 2 months, Zerynth could transform RSA’s technology to Industrial IoT and implement a remote monitoring system for its new business strategy.

Based on the developed system, there are possible extensions of the project in the foreseeable future. RSA plans to continue working with Zerynth and implement the technology on similar machines, to create real-time data displays with dedicated dashboards and integrate an automatic alarm and reporting system.