tecnalia lab
Cloud IoT

Tecnalia’s first 4.0 Laboratories: connecting companies and researchers in 360°

Tecnalia is a leading Research and Technological Development Center in Europe, with a mission to transform technology into GDP and improve people’s quality of life, as well as creating opportunities for companies. Their model and partnerships are based on a shared technological strategy with those organizations: also focusing on digital transformation, energy transition, sustainable mobility, health and urban ecosystems.

“Thanks to the Smart Concepts IoT and IA solution, created by Plain Concepts and based on Microsoft Azure technologies, we have been able to enhance our value proposition for our customers.

Utilized in the context of our Fire Digital Labs project, it has allowed us to digitalize our laboratories; making a U-turn in terms of the product testing and certification services offered to our customers, so that they can obtain more information from those tests and speed up their internal innovative processes. A key factor for this collaborative effort has been keeping a smooth relationship and a common goal.”

Jose Luis Elejalde Hernani, LabServices Director at TECNALIA

CLIENT
Tecnalia
SECTOR
Healthcare Research
SERVICE
IoT, Cloud Computing
TECHNOLOGY
Smart Concepts
With over 1,500 experts of more than 27 nationalities, they are generating and developing business opportunities through industrial property sales, promoting technology-based companies and creating diversification via new internal business lines. Tecnalia was looking to go one step further in its digitalization and connectivity strategy, setting the objective of achieving a 360° communication process with its partners. For this very reason, they entrusted Plain Concepts to help to make a reality this pioneering project, creating their first 4.0 Labs.
01

Challenges

Tecnalia offers testing and certification services for materials and products, to organizations both in national and international markets. So they required a platform that would allow the remote management of projects, as well as online access to the center's technological infrastructures, including options to remotely interact with their clients.
Building from the foundation of the previous myTecnalia communication platform, it was essential to take a step forward in the digitalization of the user experience, boosting direct communication with the technical staff, as well as establishing an efficient workflow management and secure information access.
fire digital lab
02

Results

All this led to the creation of Lab Services Connect, with its “Fire Digital Lab” being one of their most relevant transformation projects to this date. This laboratory assesses the fire behavior of materials and constructive systems.
Plain Concepts and Tecnalia joined forces to adapt the Fire Test Lab to provide 360° coverage for customers, connecting via multistream (using video and thermographic cameras), and accessing all the sensors information in real-time. By deploying our Smart Concepts solution, we managed to develop together and offer this value proposition to their corporate partners: achieving our common goal of making companies feel as if the laboratories and experts were working at their own facilities.
03

Highlights

At a time in which travels and commuting are not always possible, this groundbreaking project marks a before and after in what we call “4.0 laboratories”. Among the numerous benefits reaped are: facilitating historical data analysis and comparisons between tests; remote connectivity that enables access from all over the world, getting all parties involved and closer together; real-time connectivity and IoT sensors that show data instantly; and the possibility of boosting the analysis through cognitive services and AI....
With this project, we have laid the technological groundwork from which we can build more functionalities and smarten services even more. In addition, all this might be transferable to other lines of work and research areas, even to new laboratory formulas, or get integrated with other disruptive technologies such as Augmented Reality.
We will continue to collaborate with Tecnalia to further develop and improve their remote testing, auditing and certification services. Currently the platform offered by Tecnalia is unique in the market: and we will keep on working on it, integrating more innovative advancements and ideas. This will translate into a greater industrial and research value; result in an improved and digitalized version of the services offering; avoid unnecessary costs and travel; and consequently, will constitute a more sustainable, secure and universal model.