Danfoss Debuts New IIoT Food Retail Service Portal Powered by Microsoft Azure

Danfoss is a developer and manufacturer of district cooling and heating, high-pressure pumps, power modules, centrifugal and reciprocating compressors, motors, condensing units, switches, software, and other related products. 

The company serves global markets, including water and wastewater, automotive, energy and natural resources, food and beverage, industry, commercial and residential buildings, refrigeration and air conditioning, district energy, and more. 

A graphic from the Alsense platform. Image courtesy of Danfoss. 

 

Recently, Danfoss introduced its new, updated cloud-based portal for the management of food retail operations. 

 

The Joint Creation of Alsense by Danfoss and Microsoft

The latest platform Alsense was born from a previous version known as Danfoss Enterprize Services (DES). Danfoss has more than 80 years of experience in leading the development and manufacture of cooling and refrigeration solutions.

Danfoss saw an opportunity to use the IoT to provide the food retail industry with more streamlined operations. In October 2019, the company banded together with Microsoft to create a cloud-based service solution powered by Microsoft Azure. 

In a recent news release, Nina Lund, EMEA Retail & Consumer Goods Lead at Microsoft gave her opinion on the Alsense platform, "With Alsense Danfoss has proven the ability to understand and tackle device diversity and connectivity challenges of the food retail industry and deliver tangible benefits with an IoT platform that reduces operational costs and energy savings. This is how we empower enterprises to deliver sustainability through the smart use of technology.”
 

What Can Customers Expect?

As a cloud-based service, Alsense offers customers benefits including rapid deployment and scalability to suit store needs. Retail operators are provided with key functionalities that allow tracking asset performance such as compressors or refrigerant levels. 

Temperature data from such assets can be monitored and the appropriate action taken to prevent any drastic temperature changes from incurring a loss in consumables, which would cost retailers a large sum of money.

Energy efficiency, with a particular focus on anomalies in energy consumption across all stores (observable from a single dashboard), can be monitored and analyzed for continued improvement. 

 Alsense Food Retail Services System. Image courtesy of Danfoss.

 

Alsense provides added security through a new VPN structure and has been designed to offer easy expansion into different regions.

Another functionality of the platform is the dynamic feature roadmap. This allows features to be updated and introduced fortnightly giving customers enhancements regularly based on real-time feedback. 

 

How to Access Alsense

Through Microsoft Azure, Danfoss aims to provide customers with a platform that delivers faster reactions to alarms, increased asset uptime, reduced nuisance alarms, and more streamlined service operations.

Alsense can be accessed through a variety of devices, from a desktop, tablet, to mobile. In this way, information can be accessed more readily to tackle any immediate or ongoing requirements of supermarkets and food retail applications.