On the insect trail : WAINS GmbH uses Cumulocity IoT to hunt for pests

Darmstadt, Germany - They travel by air, land and sea, in containers or hidden in raw materials, contaminating food and other goods. Once they arrive at their destination, insects can cause a great deal of damage. Insect pests currently destroy between five and 20 percent of the global harvest-and the trend is rising. Likewise, industrial companies are always facing the risk of insect and rodent infestations that can quickly lead to production losses, which in turn can lead to substantial costs.

These days, innovative technology can help businesses get on the trail of big insects faster than ever to prevent something much worse from happening. WAINS GmbH has developed a digital monitoring system for insects to support exterminators in their work. To achieve this objective, the joint venture by Frowein GmbH & Co. KG and MeetNow! GmbH relies on Darmstadt-based Software AG's Cumulocity IoT solution to connect smart pest traps and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Digital solutions for exterminators
The solution is called traptice®. It enables users to detect a pest infestation early on so they can implement countermeasures accordingly. The traps are connected with the Cumulocity IoT platform from Software AG (Frankfurt MDAX®: SOW). Exterminators can simply use a dashboard to check online whether there is a pest infestation or not. Routine inspections that involve a lot of effort and may not find anything are now a thing of the past, or they can be performed digitally. This way exterminators and their customers can easily benefit from the advantages of innovative technologies and protect their products, equipment and transports effectively from all types of infestation. 'Thanks to Software AG's Cumulocity IoT platform, we were able to digitalize pest control-and help our customers take action faster and more effectively, which in the end reduces their costs and above all prevents downtime or even losses from a pest infestation,' says Steffen König, Managing Director of WAINS GmbH.

Two cameras are used to monitor the current status at regular intervals, and users can see which pests get caught in the traps. Sensors capture additional environmental variables that could favor an infestation, such as temperature, humidity or other factors where necessary. The traptice traps transmit all of the information to Software AG's Cumulocity IoT cloud platform. WAINS' customers can access the data in their traps through their own dashboard to be able to draw important conclusions for any potential action they need to take, and to be proactive if necessary.

Artificial intelligence for identifying pests
Exchanging information with the traps is just the beginning. In the future, artificial intelligence will help recognize which pests are caught in the traps and trigger an alarm immediately in case of a critical infestation.
'traptice shows how easy IoT can be and how fast new business markets can be opened up with the use of digital technologies. Small and midsized businesses in Germany have enormous potential in particular to implement digitalization to continue their success,' states Alwin Schauer, Managing Director of SAG Deutschland GmbH, a fully owned subsidiary of Software AG, and Senior Vice President Germany, Austria and Switzerland. WAINS' customers can deploy just a few smart traps or several thousand for monitoring, depending on their needs.

'Cumulocity IoT offers us an excellent opportunity to realize our digital monitoring efficiently as a new business model without a lot of detours. We're happy that we can provide innovative solutions for pest control for our customers, and plan to keep developing and improving those solutions,' adds König. The close collaboration with Software AG helped WAINS implement existing ideas quickly and go from testing to offering a real product in a short period of time. Likewise, the monitoring specialists at WAINS were convinced by the transparent, easy-to-understand pricing model, the comprehensive support and information exchange with the Cumulocity community.

About WAINS GmbH
As a joint venture, WAINS GmbH focuses on the entire field of digital pest monitoring. We were founded by experts in pest control and IT, and we combine their expertise with the goal of revolutionizing the control of insect pests. Our traptice® traps deliver a new concept for digital monitoring of insect and rodent pests that supports exterminators and their customers in many sectors including industry, pharmaceuticals, hospitality and gastronomy.

Learn more about WAINS GmbH and traptice® at www.wains.info.

You can also download our comprehensive white papers on 'Digital pest control in times of the Corona crisis' and 'Use of IoT devices for monitoring pest insects' on our homepage.