The Benefits of Real-Time Environmental Monitoring

Some industries lose tens of billions each year because they cannot watch or control the temperature in their stock. This is only one fraction of the problem as a whole, though, as environmental monitoring is useful across many industries. If you work in one of these, how can such technology help you have the best results and what other benefits can you receive from its use?

Below, we will help you understand the advantages of environmental monitoring in your business. As you read through, consider how each benefit would help you increase your profits and prevent losses moving forward.

An Overview of Monitoring Technology

Monitoring an environment is an important aspect of many processes, from research to stock protection and beyond. It involves the process by which you can gather data about many statistics in any area, whether open or closed. Examples of such recordable data points might include, but are not limited to:

• Temperature monitoring
• Humidity
• Pressure changes
• Carbon dioxide
• Oxygen
• Water leak
• Formaldehyde
• Light

The latest technology in the monitoring space allows for many of these at the same time. Thus, you can use a universal sensor instead of separate devices.

Universal sensors can then link to your company’s network to allow you to receive information from them in real-time. You can then access that information via the cloud or another wireless monitoring method.

This form of technology is important in many different areas of work. For example, it can mean the difference between accurate, timely results and needing to wait long periods to track data. Though these are not the only benefits, and its technology is advancing in leaps and bounds every year.

The Benefits of Real-Time Monitoring

These are some of the most important ways in which real-time monitoring can help you with your work. This list is not exhaustive, though, and you may find other ways the technology can help you in your work.

More Accuracy

By having continuous monitoring of data, you can get a lot more information on the environments you monitor at more regular intervals. This stream of data allows you to make judgments on the state of whatever you are watching at all times. You can also make more robust decisions about changes you need to make to your processes, with a holistic view of what impact different events have.

Most real-time monitoring systems can also capture information at very high frequencies. This allows you to gather more granular data on changes, as well as how fast such changes take place. It is rarely possible to do this with manual collection measurements, especially if they must occur in several places at the same time.

With such frequent checks, you can also expect any automated notifications to appear as soon as data goes out of set boundaries. You do not need to wait until the next data-checking period. Thus, you can respond well in advance of environmental factors becoming detrimental to your needs.

If there are often large ranges in the data you gather, and you need to look at an average for any stats over time, that is possible too. While your capabilities are set by the software you use to gather data, you can ensure that short peaks and troughs do not affect your actions. Instead, you can focus on large-scale changes if that is more appropriate to your work.

Protecting Sensitive Environments

Sometimes, it may be hard to receive data from within an environment without stepping into it or otherwise disrupting it. This is especially the case in a wide-ranging area such as a large outdoor or indoor space. If you travel to the monitoring equipment, though, your very presence may disrupt the nature of the results you receive.

This may be due to an increase in light, or the movement of startled animals in the region. It could even change due to your body heat or pressure from outside changing airflow.

Using wireless real-time monitoring technology, the data can instead upload to the cloud for you to see it without you entering the area. You can also see a high-detail breakdown of the data over the time you would otherwise have entered the area.

Instant Notifications

Ensuring you can react to problems as soon as they occur is one of the most important features you will need if trying to keep a consistent environment. For example, if you detect temperature changes, you can resolve them faster. In such cases, this might mean moving the items in question to different storage mediums or looking into what could cause the deviation.

Another thing such devices can do is tell you when equipment starts to fail before the environment starts to change. This may be due to mechanical breakdown, electronic issues, software failure, or a need for maintenance. Regardless of the reasons, your monitoring software can inform you of when they occur so you can solve whatever is causing the issue.

If you have information that suggests this happens several times, you can start an investigation into the reasons. With the data you have from your monitoring devices, you can then launch an investigation into the reasons behind any issues you have had. You can then prevent them from happening in the future.

By having instant notifications, your company can respond fast and prevent any significant impact on your work. This helps you to maintain the integrity and quality of your work, as well as protect your assets.

Preventing Human Error

Monitoring an environment can play a huge role in ensuring you safeguard potential assets. These can include your data, stock, or anything else from human error. If you rely on your staff to check and update environments, there is every chance that inaccuracies may occur, such as:

• Typos causing errors in data entry
• Omissions of data due to negligence
• Accidental errors
• Malicious data entry
• Delays in receiving important data

All these issues could lead to larger problems further down the line. Ensuring the high quality of outputs is thus imperative. Using electronics to track an environment can mean you do not need to worry about these problems and can instead focus on more important things.

Compliance With Regulations

Depending on the industry you work in, you may find that your work involves adhering to many different standards. These might be recommendations set by your company. Then again, they could be legal regulations that could cause your business to receive fines if it does not follow them.

In some cases, failure to follow regulations means a whole research project might end up with invalid results. Or in an industrial setting, you might need to throw out batches of product due to spoilage.

Real-time environmental monitoring can help you avoid any regulation-related problems. It instead allows you to react faster if anything falls outside specific bounds.

Depending on your software, you can even get notifications or alarms when the environment hits certain states. You can then respond and continue to follow regulations without as much stress or concern.

Should your company undergo an audit, or need to discuss or prove its compliance, you need to know you have the data to back up your actions. The existence of well-maintained real-time monitoring devices will go a long way in helping you defend yourself.

Data from your devices can show consistent adherence to regulations. If you use notifications for environments going outside of expected bounds, you can show due diligence and vigilance too.

Quality Control

Changes in the environment can often make a huge impact on the quality of products you create. There is almost a limitless number of things that can cause unwanted changes during a production process. As such, you need to have control of these to get the best results.

By having information on the status of any environment, you can make adjustments yourself as things change. You can even do this automatically with the right software.

By combining the results from monitoring with control systems, you can ensure it remains perfect for whatever you need at all times.

Making sure you have a stable environment ensures not only high-quality products but consistency too. This will increase your reputation as someone who can provide high-quality products over a long period.

You could even negotiate to monitor areas you would not usually have control over. These include shipping and storage for the items when they are in the hands of retailers or other users of the stock.

Another reason this is very important is that should the quality of a product drop too much, you may end up needing to dispose of it. This can cause huge amounts of waste and loss for your company. Thus, by keeping an environment stable, you can see a drop in preventable wastage.

Easier Analytics

Any sort of machine-learning algorithm is only as good as the data you get it. As such, by using automated electronically-collected data, it is much more likely you can get an AI to look at it for patterns. The possibilities for this are many, including:

• Creating predictive models for future planning
• Optimizing the environment and how you maintain it
• Discovering unexpected relationships between environmental factors

In general, you can get a much deeper understanding of your whole process. This can continue forward as you work on later projects. Thus the quality of any work you do will continue to iterate for the better with each role you take on.

Locations Where Monitoring Works Best

While it is rare to find a location where you would not be well-suited to finding more accurate data. Still, some locations have specific needs for such information.

Laboratory Monitoring

Ensuring you have valid results from any research is imperative. This is because should your data not be consistent, people may choose to critique your experimental methods. By using ongoing monitoring, you can ensure your tests keep their integrity, and that you can reproduce the results easier.

During an experiment, it is also useful to have data coming in at all times. For example, if you use manual methods to monitor any experiment you might miss changes that occur between checks. With an electronic method, you can avoid missing anything and detect fluctuations in a closed system that you might not expect.

Many areas of research might also have specific guidelines related to how to research something. Real-time monitors can show that you have adhered to any rules that are in place. This prevents any potential delays to your research process that might otherwise occur.

Pharmacy Monitoring

The integrity of various medicines, such as vaccines, insulins, or antibiotics must stay at a constant temperature. Any rise in heat can lead to them becoming useless, and in some cases, even harmful to the user.

By using real-time monitoring in your storage process, you ensure you can receive alerts if the medicines are likely to heat up. You can then respond fast and with efficiency to maintain the safety of those who might use them.

Large-Scale Environments

When you are dealing with large environments, different locations in the same place might offer varied results. This is especially true in places like:

• Warehouses
• Factories
• Biospheres

Instead of traveling between each location and making manual checks, you could link a series of sensors to a software suite. This allows you to have a much higher level of oversight with ease.

As you scale the area up, you also do not need to worry about needing more people to check these. If you connect each sensor to the cloud, each one can give you information without needing additional legwork.

Advanced Environmental Monitoring For Your Company

Having a robust system for environmental monitoring can bring a wealth of benefits to your business. This is why we are here to help you achieve that.

We can talk to you about the specific sensors we offer and how they can help you get ahead of the game. So, pick up the phone and talk to us today to learn how to bring your data gathering into the 21st century.