Nexans chooses VISEO to design its IoT data management platform

The world leader in network cabling has selected VISEO to integrate its IoT data storage solution.

Nexans is the world leader in cables, network cabling solutions and advanced connectivity. With a solid industrial presence in 34 countries and business activities all over the world, Nexans employs almost 26,000 people. In 2017 alone, the group achieved gross sales of 6.4 billion euros.

In 2017, when it launched the industrial production of its connected cable drums, Nexans decided to develop its own IoT platform. The logic behind this choice was that the true added value was more in the analysis and data management than in the tags themselves. As a longtime Microsoft user, particularly for desktop software, the Nexans group had already made use of our services to design its internal IoT data management platform using Microsoft solutions.

Stocking data collected by cable drums

The Azure cloud platform interfaces with the Nexans’ ERP (SAP) so that the sales team can distribute drums to clients seamlessly and fast. In addition to the Azure IoT tool dedicated to managing the fleet of drums, Nexans can also receive alerts when drums are not working properly or need repairs. On the client side, users have access to an interactive dashboard (manage stock in real time, follow deployment rates, rotation cycles, etc.).

Currently, Nexans has distributed the connected drums and are working on a large scale in several European countries. The long term goal is to place an electronic tag in all of the consigned drums. “Today, we have a fleet of 100,000 consigned drums across Europe, of which we have already equipped 1,000. Our objective is to quickly equip at least 50,000, and the entire fleet within the next five years, more or less” announced Thibault Goulin, Nexans Digital Services Manager. The Group is also planning to open a predictive maintenance service for the drums, thanks to the Azure AI service’s powerful capacity to calculate. Incidentally, Nexans has begun to connect other products, such as its cable reels.

Find out more about the project’s details sur Microsoft’s website