Equipment as a service with SAP IoT – Part 1

Summary –

Water is the most important fluid known to a human being so far and its very important for us to get clean water for daily consumption. When we say clean water first thing which comes into our mind is a water purifier (Purifier). Purchasing a purifier is a costly affair and on top of it, maintaining is extra overhead for customers as they have to check for periodic maintenance. With changing customer needs its time for having a smart purifier which can alert customers about the periodic maintenance and well-being of the purifier health.

Customers have 2 options to own a purifier –

1. Purchase the connected purifier and maintain yourself.
2. Subscribe a purifier.

This blog will be discussing the purifier subscription model and how it can be developed using SAP IoT which enhances data-driven intelligence from machines. There are few companies in the market that have already launched the subscription model and which is getting pretty much attraction.

Before we discuss this topic in detail let’s list out a few advantages of having a purifier subscription model for customers.

1. Free lifetime maintenance.
2. Zero initial investment to purchase a purifier.
3. The following table explains the cost of actually purchasing a purifier VS subscribing one.

Let’s see how SAP IoT platform can help manufacturers to manage and serve these smart purifiers to their customers.

Architecture – 

The SAP Cloud Platform Internet of Things Service enables customers and partners to develop, customize, and operate the Internet of Things business applications in the cloud. Following is the high-level architecture which we will use to build this model.

Functionality in a nutshell-

With a connected purifier, using the subscription model user gets a purifier installed at his home at negligible/ no cost.  User and respective devices are onboarded on the platform upon the successful installation of the purifier. The purifier comes with a pre-installed SIM or connects to your home Wi-Fi network to send the health status and water consumption back to the SAP IoT platform.

The customer gets a periodic notification about the consumption subscription details. The manufacturer gets a notification about the health status of the purifier which helps him to do proactive maintenance in case of any alarming issue.

Building Blocks for our scenario – 

1. Onboarding purifier on SAP Cloud Platform IoT platform
   1. Create things in SAP Leonardo IoT (LIOT).
   2. Create Devices and sensors.
   3. Map Thing to Device
2.  Send sensor data to SAP  IoT service using messaging gateway.
   1. MQTT
   2. REST
3. Create Rules and Actions
   1. Trigger business workflow whenever a rule is satisfied using an action.
4. Build a device monitoring dashboard using SAP Web IDE
   1. Using reusable templates and controls
5. Mobile application to show the consumer the actual consumption of water and the option to recharge the account.

All the points mentioned above will be covered step by step in a series of blogs.

I hope you understood the purifier subscription model. Please do share your thoughts on this and stay tuned for the next part where I will be explaining the onboarding purifier on the SAP Cloud Platform IoT.

Part 2 – https://blogs.sap.com/2020/06/09/water-purifier-as-a-service-with-sap-cloud-platform-internet-of-things-iot-part-2/

Part 3 – https://blogs.sap.com/2020/09/29/equipment-as-a-service-with-sap-cloud-platform-internet-of-things-iot-part-3/

Part 4 – https://blogs.sap.com/2021/02/09/equipment-as-a-service-with-sap-iot-part-4/

References –

1. https://help.sap.com/viewer/product/SAP_CP_IOT_CF/Cloud/en-US
2. https://developers.sap.com/topics/sap-webide.html
3. https://help.sap.com/viewer/product/SAP_Leonardo_IoT/2005a/en-US