Data Acquisition

In order to provide timely replenishment events for the supplier, it is essential to acquire stock level and consumption information from remote consumer sites reliably and accurately. ADOPT-FIT uses a variety of methods and tools in order to do this.

For the management of bulk stocks such as liquids, powders, granules contained within tanks or silos, ADOPT-FIT has designed a range of data acquisition products called "Outstations" which connect directly to tank and silo monitoring systems in order to read the stock levels.

Outstations are robust, industrial quality, electronic systems that can acquire information from site infrastructure such as sensors, DCS systems and MRP systems. The data gathered is the transmitted to ADOPT-FIT's servers where further processing is performed prior to the secure storage and archiving of data. Data is presented to ADOPT-FIT's customers in a number of Web Pages and is also encapsulated within XML messages which are transferred regularly to our customers' ERP systems.

ADOPT-FIT is also able to gather data from MRP systems and then integrate this data into its back office systems.

ADOPT-FIT has developed a number of methods to transmit the data from diverse global sites. Systems using dial-up telemetry and GSM communication have now been in service for several years, as have systems that integrate directly with the consuming sites monitoring systems.

More recently, Internet transmission protocols have played an increasing role in the data acquisition.

With the co-operation of the consuming site, it is possible to provide "live" data for on-demand replenishment.