Challenge
A Cup Of Tea" is one of the most fragrant forms of energy booster that has been basically pursued to combat the exhaustion that has been plaguing oneself after a long day. Thus the saga of the revitalizing potentiality of the beverage gradually commenced with the inception of the provision of supply in the formation of Tea Vending Machinery in the recent years, that established an exponential rate of consumption hence resulting in progression to the vending industry as well as the commodity i.e; Tea. With substantial pros experienced through the surpass in popularity of the vending machines to the industry, in the 21st century, nevertheless, the subjection of the vending machinery organizations in the interpretation and organizing the big data available has made the management functionalities to a state of obscure. The prime management activities that encompasses, mapping the territory of the outlets, track of utilization and stock replenishments could perhaps reflect critically in the management aspects, when data isn’t harnessed to the optimal in order to engage human factors in the decision making process.
Solution
The inseparable bond of SenzMate and IOT has channeled it’s profound sustainable problem-solving skills with the invention of SenzMate System Unit and has stepped into the breach in a fashion of Remote Management System (RMS) to the vending industry. In retrospect, to the issues encountered in the managerial tasks, the system influences succession through it’s proactive form of data collection through the SenzMate unit combined with the management in the SenzMate Cloud in correspondence to the generation of validated reports to make timely devised judgements through the RMS user application system, where the tangible SenzMate unit is integrated either in the existing circuit unit or on the external of the vending machine. The system’s viability accompanied with it’s immense high tech infrastructure has bestowed the deliverance of the uniform efficient and optimized information notwithstanding the fact that the complexity of the system algorithms are betrayed by the excellency in the simplicity of the user interface that creates the ease of comprehending the current circumstances that encloses, the rates of utilization of the product, territorial track of the tea vending machines, generations of revenue reports, etc.
Idea Stage
After a thorough examination of the process of developing a remote management system for a tea vending machine, we decided to automate the procedure of obtaining daily usage reports for tea machines at all shops. Many studies and decisions had to be made in order to design the suggested solution, including selecting the end device, coordinator, SenzMate Unit, SenzMate Cloud, SenzMate User application, and the precise materials to be utilized in the device's design. In simple terms, the solution is a "RMS for Tea vending machines".
Prototype
The Remote Management System, enables the tea machine to communicate with the Remote user application. In the system architecture, the SenzMate unit which will be integrated with the existing system will enable remote access. Following are the features of SenzMate unit;
- Inputs connecting with buttons
- Processor for processing inputs
- Data storage
- Internal communication
There are two ways to integrate the SenzMate unit with an existing system;
- Integrating with the current circuit unit.
- Integrating externally
SenzMate cloud interconnects tea machines with user applications. It handles following ;
- Data management
- Device management
- Authentication
- Authorization
- Real time communication
Minimum Viable Product
We moved on to building a minimum viable product, the SenzMate Application once the prototype testing yielded positive results. On the second step, the mobile app was developed. The application was created for the end users to manage the tea machines remotely via a web interface. Our goal was to create a simple and hassle free application for the users.
The web interface has the following pages:
- Home page
- User authentication page
- Map with outlet Locations
- Usage graph of each outlets
- Excel format output
- Gram usage reports
- Revenue reports
- Email reports
Commercialization
However, if we want to integrate with the outside world, the exterior disguise must be appealing. Because there are so many various types of external interfaces for different machines, we require a variety of masks. As its number of units is low, designing alternative masks is not cost effective. As a result, we recommend that the system be integrated internally. In any case, we can use this system as an external unit with a key mask in the future for large-scale applications.
Results
The data driven approach carried out abiding the intelligence of the IOT has a conducive impact on the ubiquitous tea vending machines while providing a circular view of the plethora of instances of processes, mapped within the scenario of the RMS of vending machines. The three fold system architecture that includes the SenzMate Unit, Cloud and User Application has been harnessed to increase the revenues of this organization while lessening the frequency of the restocking trip and a myriad of usage track records where the RMS provides a great opportunity for all the vending industries out there to grab the experience of IT in a least bound expenditures comparative to other commercialized solutions.
Written by Sinthuja