How Networking Plants Using ConcreteGO CloudBatch™ Benefit Concrete Producers

Maximo Ares Garcia has been working in the construction industry for over 7 years. He began as a sales consultant for concrete equipment with a variety of concrete companies in Latin America. He was responsible for helping and guiding them to maximize plant production output from their equipment and getting the best return on investment. Maximo knows concrete batch equipment, and in his opinion, the new CloudBatch from Sysdyne is changing the way we batch concrete.

What is the real value of CloudBatch for Concrete producers, especially those with plants in rural areas?

Traditionally to perform batch plant maintenance and system upgrades, resources are dispatched to go onsite to each individual plant, costing man hours and a loss in production revenue. For producers with plants in rural areas, this is especially a problem. It forces the plant to shut down and production to stop which cost money, not to mention the cost of sending people for the day or in some cases several days to install, troubleshoot and test new batch software updates.

“With CloudBatch, plants are centrally networked so any update or upgrade can be done remotely from a central location. It’s simple, straightforward and reduces plant downtime significantly.”

How many concrete producers have held off updating batch software to avoid the headache of shutting down the plant? Using CloudBatch, software upgrades are carried out without moving resources or shutting down production. A backup of the plant’s data, including mix design information and plant configurations, is already available in the cloud, so loading the information is seamless. As part of SaaS (Software as a Service), the batch software is updated smoothly and continuously on a regular basis. In fact, if the physical batch computer were ever to go down, the batch man can easily switch to any other device, whether it be a computer, tablet or even their phone and continue batching within minutes. The data is cached or saved both locally and on the cloud, so production can continue to push forward regardless. No more waiting days for proprietary computers to arrive, then wrestling with data back-ups to get operations up and running. The future is friendly and this is a great example of how technology is working FOR concrete producers and not the other way around.

What about predictive plant maintenance using CloudBatch, how would that work?

Every ready-mix plant requires some level of maintenance, however if you see the problem coming before it forces a shut down, that is money saved. Using IoT (internet of things) and sensors on the plant, CloudBatch could possibly run diagnostics to detect potential operational failures before they happen. This would avoid forced plant shutdowns that not only cost money and loss of production but also reduce maintenance bills for replacing parts on the plant.

“Being connected using CloudBatch gives producers, especially those with plants in rural areas, the chance to keep their fingers on the pulse of their batching operations to reduce operational costs and maximize output.”

As ConcreteGO CloudBatch rolls out on the market, concrete producers will also benefit from having access to both batch and dispatch data in one central location. The single database for batch and dispatch information will dramatically improve any concrete producer’s ability to track and measure performance and monitor costs more effectively from the palm of their hand.

Ready-Mix operations will be able to train new batch men easily online or organize refresher courses to ensure they are using all the key features properly and getting the best return on their investment. Using the cloud, all plants and personnel can be networked as one.

Additional capabilities like monitoring production volumes from mobile dashboards and consolidating inventory and material consumption as it happens in real time, is a game changer. All these benefits are only possible by connecting batch systems to the cloud and managing a single database for the entire operation. Once installed, CloudBatch will give Ready-Mix producers unprecedented access to the information they need, when they need it, so they can run their operations more profitably.