Digging Deep: Glued Solutions

Throughout this Digging Deep series we’ve taken an in-depth look at the Smarter Building Technologies Alliance, and its internal factories Direct Discount Lighting and Integrated Advanced Controls, and last up in this initial series is SBT factory Glued Solutions (GSI).

Let’s jump in.

Who is Glued Solutions?

Serving the advanced networked controls industry since 2006, Glued Solutions, in a nutshell, is the industry’s leading provider of wireless building control system provisioning, configuration, maintenance, and application development services.

Sounds great, right? Ok…Ok…I know you’re probably asking what is system provisioning anyway? And why, in fact, should you care? That’s fair. We’ll jump into what Glued Solutions “does” and fully define each of these services in more depth a bit later in this post.

For now, let’s nail down who GSI is.

So, “who is” Glued Solutions? The best way to characterize GSI is through its unparalleled wireless networking and advanced controls expertise. Glued Solutions is the authority on how to most efficiently design, install, and program a wireless smart building system. So, when you think GSI, think wireless networking experts. Of course, there’s a lot more behind those words, but suffice to say this is GSI in a nutshell.

Glued Solutions = Wireless Networking Experts

Alright, on to what it is that Glued Solutions does and why its products and services will make the deployment of a wireless smart building system easier.

How to Deploy a Wireless Networked Control System Easier

How do you make the deployment of an advanced wireless networked control system easier? Lots of ways. And Glued Solutions continues to innovate new ways to improve this process and reduce the complexity that’s often associated with deploying an advanced networked controls system.

Before getting too far into the weeds, let’s first look at a typical system deployment from a 20,000’ view.

As you can see from the above outline a traditional wireless control system deployment is fraught with multiple steps, hand-offs, information exchanges, and a constant back and forth to and from the job site. And to make matters more complex, many installers will attempt to take on all of the above-outlined tasks in order to prevent multiple revisits to a job site – a noble effort, but more often than not taking on the IT portion of a wireless controls project proves to be far more of a hassle than a benefit.

Here’s why.

When it comes to taking on all responsibilities of deploying an advanced wireless controls system, installers would not only have to deal with installing the system’s control devices into LED luminaires while onsite, they would also have to interface with Information Technology to get the wireless network backbone up and running as well. Couple that with the need for a technical knowledge base to troubleshoot possible malfunctioning devices throughout the installation and it’s pretty easy to get lost in the weeds quickly.

What Glued Solutions has done – and continues to refine – is to streamline the start, middle, and later deployment stages of back and forth between commissioning agent and installer and has distilled the entire process down into five straightforward deployment steps. These GSI deployment steps include:

The goal of Glued Solutions’ streamlined deployment process – what we call our NEXTGEN System Provisioning – is to pair up our remote GSI technicians alongside onsite installing contractors to act as an enhancement partner to get jobs deployed faster, with fewer complications, and backed by the technical support required when things go haywire.

Going Far Beyond System Commissioning

Yes, it’s true. System provisioning and commissioning are both critical aspects of a successful wireless control system deployment, but they are not the be-all and end-all of a peak performing system. There are countless attributes of a top performing system and one of those things is ongoing system maintenance and technical support.

Ongoing Technical System Support

Once a project is finalized, QA’d, and closed out, that’s only half the story. Long-term system monitoring, tweaking, and maintenance are all part of ensuring the original design intent of the wireless networked control system is achieved. We’ll be jumping into plenty of in-depth conversations on system support, maintenance, and optimization in future posts so make sure to keep an eye out for them – there will be some solid, actionable, information in those posts.

Custom Application Development

What else does Glued Solutions “do”? Well, we could of course list off a laundry list of products and services that would fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, but that would get pretty boring, pretty quickly. GSI’s custom application development service is one item I would like to address and share with you, though.

Why?

Well, that’s pretty straightforward; because in the world of the Internet of Things (IoT), connected devices, and billions of Internet-enabled widgets, what you do with your information is far more powerful than what it actually is.

While there are plenty of use cases for custom application development – which a handful are quite honestly still being dreamed up as I write this and you read it – some of the Glued Solutions innovative application developments include:

Interactive multi-facility energy consumption vs. predicted savings analysis
Icy condition alarm notification to alert employees of slippery sidewalks
Monthly space utilization report including occupancy heat mapping
Machinery water temperature monitoring application
And much more

I think the most exciting thing about Glued Solutions custom application development services is the fact that it’s virtually limitless. If it can be dreamt up, GSI technicians can likely build it.

Propelling Smarter Building Technology Solutions

As you’ve learned in our previous posts in this Digging Deep series, each Smarter Building Technologies Alliance factory plays a critical role in building upon and rounding out our innovative LED lighting and advanced controls solutions – Glued Solutions is a prime illustration of this.

Now that you’ve taken a deeper look into the who and what of Glued Solutions, you should start to see how – when combined with Smarter Building Technologies Alliance factories Direct Discount Lighting and Integrated Advanced Controls – Glued Solutions intimate technological understanding of wireless networked controls propels SBT’s innovative solutions beyond a simple widget that’s bought and sold.

Together Smarter Building Technologies Alliance factories, Direct Discount Lighting, Integrated Advanced Controls, and Glued Solutions, organize to bring you truly innovative, long-term technology solutions that bring the hundred-year-old-plus light bulb into the 21^st Century.