Industrial cities like Cleveland, Ohio are home to many manufacturing facilities that produce chemical byproducts that must be disposed of. To rid themselves of waste, many of these manufacturers have pretreatment systems that clean the waste before dumping the treated water into city sewers.

To prevent untreated dumping, sewer authorities monitor the factory discharge for violations of quality standards.

Unfortunately, these plants are dispersed along the sewage grid. It used to be extremely expensive and difficult to integrate widespread plants. Competitors offered expensive leased lines or licensed radio systems; however, many of these were unreliable and impractical, or had issues being installed.

Barker Products, a Plating Company in Cleveland, looked for alternatives and found Data-Command. They wanted a solution that was easily accessible from any web browser and could integrate new data with their historical collection systems. Additionally, they needed notifications if manufacturers were dumping illicit materials. The output had to be checked consistently – and, of course, the solution had to be affordable.

To save them money, Data-Command got creative.
Some facilities had DSL while others had cable or T1 lines. Those with neither were easily connected through cell services. Data-Command connected all instrumentation through a Data-Command Lynx unit and interfaced with flow meters and fluid samplers.

Within a few weeks, the entire solution was installed. It automatically began communicating and delivering updates every minute to a secure web server, making it easier than ever for the company to monitor.