Since 2008, Ikhaya Automation Systems has been delivering comprehensive temperature monitoring solutions. With a diverse range of use case scenarios, ranging from industrial and commercial, to medical and pharmaceutical, remote temperature control enables businesses to keep their products under strict control while complying with governing body regulations.

Ikhaya is one of only two companies in South Africa approved, and audited, by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to monitor the transport and protection of pharmaceutical products. Ikhaya has started shipping products to countries running the WHO and UNICEF vaccine programmes. The vaccines require strict temperature monitoring in fridges used for transport.

The nature of Ikhaya’s business case requires rigorous global solution standards. Every element of Ikhaya’s solution has to be online at all times, monitored, and tightly controlled. To this end, Ikhaya entered into a managed connectivity partnership with Trinity IoT that extended beyond just the supply of SIM cards.

With Trinity, all Ikhaya SIMs are provisioned through the Trinity APN. This enabled the customer to use SIMs from more than one mobile network provider while benefitting from having all the data go through the same access point. Furthermore, Trinity provided Ikhaya with complete network visibility through the Trinity Connect unified online platform. This empowers Ikhaya to drill down into all aspects of their connectivity and IoT hardware ecosystem. In doing so, the organisation can rule out potential problem areas in these components to quickly address any operational concerns.

With Ikhaya’s products and services, businesses are able to monitor temperatures remotely, configure thresholds and alerts, and even set trigger-based rules to change the temperature when needed. Ikhaya has built its own specialised hardware that is able to track temperature in real-time from the source.

Ikhaya now has access to the required data to draw reports and ensure remote temperature monitoring adheres to WHO requirements. Even though Ikhaya did not require IoT hardware or endpoints from Trinity for this project, Trinity worked closely with the organisation to develop a comprehensive solution that could be retrofitted into their business without causing any disruption.

Real-time advantage

More recently, the partnership has been expanded to include a manufacturer of refrigerated trailers. This has resulted in Ikhaya doing a significant amount of cold chain transport for customers. One of the customer bases of refrigerated trailers comes through SERCO and the SPAR Group. Here the technology not only monitors the temperature but also parameters such as axle load, air pressure, brake pressure, odometer reading and engine revolutions. Every time one of Ikhaya’s customers wants to track a refrigerated shipment, Trinity enables them to do so.

Real-time temperature monitoring has become mandatory in several industries. Using manual temperature recordings and keeping manual logs can result in errors coming into the process. This human-driven approach can result in potential fraudulent data.

Trinity empowered Ikhaya to address its business requirement for real-time temperature monitoring with a fully automated, remote temperature monitoring solution.

This underpins how Trinity’s technology stack can enable companies like Ikhaya to become more innovative in their business development with the connectivity environment taken care of. Fundamentally, Trinity is an IoT enablement partner that takes care of the resource-intensive, risky operational components of IoT implementation. This enables organisations to focus more on decreasing their product’s time to market.

The way forward

Ikhaya is looking to expand into the US and European markets. Backed by the WHO, they know their solution quality is of the highest standard and can pass international regulations.