The Silent Revolution

How the “Internet of Things” is changing the cleaning industry?

The only constant in life is change. This is something we experience personally and individually as we pass through the different stages of our lives. These are usually small changes that we do not notice instantly, but only after many years. Sometimes these are revolutionary events that occur suddenly and turn everything upside down – like the birth of a child. In addition to purely individual events, our lives are also influenced by numerous megatrends, i.e. defining forces that initiate change processes that affect us all over a long period of time and which we cannot evade. Examples are globalisation, urbanisation, population growth and demographic change, growing individualism, changes in energy and resources or the increasing proliferation of technology. In the case of the latter trend, the development of the “Internet of Things” plays a special role, the affects of which are more revolutionary in their effects than evolutionary – because it will impact greatly on our lives at extraordinary speed and reinforce the effects of other megatrends. The predictions are clear: whereas today (end of 2014) about 12 billion objects are connected to the Internet, i.e. about 1.7 objects for each person on this planet, this figure is estimated to rise to 33 billion objects by the end of 2020, half of which without direct interface to people. They form the “Internet of Things” and will revolutionise our lives with their silent and growing number: they make difficult decisions for us, offer more comfort, help to save time… The Internet of Things, even if it still seems to be a vision of the future, has long since been part of our daily lives. Ultimately, it is no longer our computers and mobile phones that are connected to the Internet. In the meantime, many devices are “Smart”: washing machines, thermostats, refrigerators, shutters, wristwatches – many objects are already connected to the Internet. This allows us to start a washing machine on a 60° wash, regulate room temperatures in our home, control garden watering via an app or also monitor our power consumption – from anywhere. An application from the area of energy technology, for example, is an energy-self-sufficient housing estate with its own smart grid.

And for some time now, not only futurologists have been concerned with scenarios based on highly networked infrastructures. Moreover, it is city planners, architects and naturally numerous industries and service providers who, with their products and associated manufacturing processes, adapt themselves to or promote the widespread use of “smart” objects. This naturally also affects the cleaning industry as such – both on the manufacturer side and at user level.

Changed cleaning requirements

Population growth and the continuing trend towards urbanisation will have a decisive influence on all issues relating to cleaning. The world population is currently estimated at 7 billion and is expected to rise to 11 billion by 2100. As a result, municipalities today are confronted with the challenge of supporting and providing new forms of sustainable housing. High-rise buildings and vertical planting are becoming more common due to the increasing shortage of land and this will make the use of manoeuverable cleaning vehicles necessary in order to clean narrow and complex building and road structures. If the future trend is to grow plants on walls to save space on the ground, green care and watering will also change. For future municipal cleaning tasks, it will not suffice to only take roads into consideration – house facades and underwater gardens will also have to be taken into account. A house covered in algae for the subsequent production of biogas, for example, has different requirements to a house with a rendered facade. Facade cleaning will involve further challenges in particular for new building concepts – for example, so-called water houses situated near to coastal regions or rivers, which stand on piles in water and require completely different care compared to conventional houses.

Due to the increasing world population, more and more people will be living closer together. High hygiene standards are necessary in order to prevent outbreaks of diseases and epidemics. Germs and viruses must not be given a chance to develop and spread. A high demand on future cleaning tasks. In old age and care homes, hospitals and wherever many people come together: sports and cultural events, public transport, airports, town hall meetings … to name but a few examples.

Intelligent information systems for city cleaning

With all these intertwined changes and resulting new demands, the increasing level of networking, – i.e. the Internet of Things – offers diverse opportunities in numerous fields of applications.

Conceivable and already being tested for municipal cleaning is the use of intelligent sensors and information systems, which provide information when roads are dirty or where wastepaper bins need to be emptied, for example. Instead of routinely emptying all wastepaper bins throughout a district, only bins that signal they are full are emptied. In the background, appropriately optimised routes will be calculated for city cleaning – saving time and energy. After only a few cycles, it can also be determined where wastepaper bins need to be emptied more frequently than usual – and correspondingly larger capacities provided. And when squares, roads and pavements signal – sensor-controlled and networked – that they need cleaning, this will also benefit city cleaning. The size and type of cleaning vehicles and personnel to be used can be defined needs-based and appropriate plans of action drawn up. If roads signal a closure or accident, this can be handled completely differently than is the case today. Initial concepts are already implemented in modern navigation systems. However, the possibilities will increase, assuming that one day, all cars and lorries as well as the traffic infrastructure itself are networked and will be able to automatically react to targets, volume of traffic, road conditions, available parking and other variables.

Benefits for building cleaning

All of these ideas ultimately benefit building cleaning: here, active fleet management already offers numerous benefits today. The starting point for the use of machine-to-machine communication in building cleaning is the question where precisely individual cleaning machines are located in an object. In addition to localisation, factors such as the maintenance condition (e.g. charging state of batteries, detergent volume used, mechanical or electronic problems) and operating status of cleaning machines (how long and where the machine was used) are also of decisive importance for optimised fleet management. Role-based evaluation systems allow selective access to this data in order to answer specific questions such as capacity utilisation, meaningfulness of the use of certain machines or contractual implementation of cleaning tasks. And that is not all: if repairs are necessary, the service technician knows in advance which spare parts are needed. Some issues can even be resolved through remote maintenance. Software updates will be remotely installed – and much more.

These possibilities ultimately result in a
considerable cost reduction through increased capacity utilisation, lead to increased transparency for all those involved and benefit sustainability. In connection with future scenarios such as the “Intelligent Building”, there are many more far-reaching possibilities. If, for example, the floor of a building communicates with the cleaning machines and signals its degree of soiling, the detergent volume can be dosed as required instead of working with standardised parameters. And machine settings, such as the contact pressure for scrubber driers, can be adapted to suit the particular situation. Automatically. Where heavy soiling needs to be removed quickly, e.g. large liquid spillages, the building can even direct the cleaner to the location where cleaning is required. Whether dusting, window cleaning or floor care, wherever cleaning still takes place today based on defined intervals and without ascertaining actual demand, optimisations without compromising cleanliness and hygiene are possible. At the same time, the utilisation of machine and personnel capacities increases.

Internet of Things – perspectives for building cleaning

Permanently increasing demands on cleanliness and hygiene with a simultaneous pressure of costs – building cleaning finds itself in a dilemma. The Internet of Things with its intelligent, networked objects and spaces will provide numerous optimisation options, whereby these conflicting requirements will be aligned. Everyone profits from this silent revolution: contract cleaners, facility managers and building users.