TRAILAR
REFERENCES

Eco-friendly logistics featuring solar technology and digital solutions from tarent solutions GmbH

“It almost feels like tarent is an integral part of the TRAILAR team.”
Sascha Mülhausen, Head of Product, TRAILAR

Situation

The TRAILAR solution is based on thin, highly durable solar panels that are applied to the previously unused roof surfaces of commercial vehicles.

 

The solar energy thereby generated flows, in a way that is managed using the TRAILAR Smart Controller, into the vehicle’s power supply system. The battery absorbs the additional capacity, which can be used for charging tail lifts, lights, or cooling units, for example. This relieves the load on the alternator and engine, thereby reducing fuel consumption. Depending on the application and usage behavior involved, fuel savings of up to 5% can be achieved and CO2 emissions reduced by approximately two tons per truck annually. As tarent solutions is the official integration partner for Software AG’s Cumulocity IoT platform, TRAILAR approached us to develop the missing software modules and perfect the overall product.

About TRAILAR

TRAILAR was founded in 2018 as a start-up within the Deutsche Post DHL Group’s corporate incubation program. Its focus was on reducing the fuel consumption of commercial vehicles and thereby also reducing their emissions. TRAILAR’s solutions play an important role in the group’s environmentally friendly logistics operations, but are also available for external customers worldwide.

Our solution

Our task was to develop an IoT platform, with Cumulocity as the product, for the purpose of calculating aspects including the actual fuel savings achieved for the vehicle. To this end, the telematics unit needed to be integrated while the platform, which was being customized at TRAILAR’s request, needed to undergo further development.

 

As well as the solar panels, the TRAILAR solution includes the aforementioned smart controller and various sensors. As a result, the system is now able, among other things, to measure the quantities of energy produced and consumed at various locations within the vehicle and capture further data related to the vehicle, such as usage behavior.
To ensure that the aspects monitored and reported are easy to understand, the collected raw data has to be processed. All sensor values are first transmitted from the vehicle’s telematics system to the Cumulocity IoT platform. Apama is used for further processing as a live streaming analytics component along with various microservices. These Java microservices, written by us, read the data, compensate for any sensor deviations, and calculate actual energy consumption in kWh from all of the readings taken.

 

Finally, we created three custom widgets for the Cumulocity dashboard. We are thereby providing a customized form of visualization that allows for comprehensive monitoring.

 

The end result is a detailed Cumulocity dashboard, delivering full transparency about the fuel savings achieved for TRAILAR and its customers. The solution promises an ROI within 12 to 18 months depending on the particular application involved.

Key facts

  • 6-person development team (incl. Product Owner & Scrum Master)
  • 3 custom widgets
  • Integration into the production system
  • Development using live data
  • Consulting on use of the Cumulocity IoT platform
  • Comprehensive project management in conjunction with the hardware manufacturer and Software AG

Technologies

  • Cumulocity IoT platform
  • Java microservices for Cumulocity Microservice Runtime
  • Apama rules

Methodologies

  • Agile project management
  • Scrum-based development
STATEMENTS

About the project

Sascha Mülhausen
Head of Product
TRAILAR

As part of a highly professional and agile collaboration with tarent, we have developed an IoT platform based on Cumulocity. On the platform, we use dashboards, widgets, streaming analytic engines, and microservices to process, store, and visualize data – such as the amount of solar energy generated by the TRAILAR smart controller system. This enables us to make the value added by our product visible to our customers. The tarent team stood out for its ability to help us to initiate development in a highly flexible and rapid way. The members of the team are involved in every phase and we’ve enjoyed working with them so much that we’ve already spent a couple of evenings out together at a pizzeria or brewery. It almost feels like tarent is an integral part of the TRAILAR team.

Patrick Steinert
Head of Emerging Technologies
tarent solutions GmbH

The development for TRAILAR allowed us to be involved in an exciting and innovative project while working together with a great team. There was real trust between all the parties involved in the cooperation, providing an ideal basis for our agile development approach. In addition to the outstanding professional partnership, our communications with one another, based on a relationship of equals, were always very pleasant on a human level, too. Our teams were able to merge with one another and thereby achieve results in the shortest possible time frame – a fact of which both companies are proud.

Technology and experience

tarent in figures

26

years of experience

4

office locations

300 +

IT professionals

50

digitization experts

15

partners

27

parallel development projects


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