Herrenknecht is a technology leader in the area of mechanized tunneling systems. The company delivers cutting-edge tunnel boring machines for all ground conditions and in all diameters — ranging from 0.10 to 19 meters. The Herrenknecht product range includes tailor-made machines for transport tunnels (Traffic Tunneling) and supply and disposal tunnels (Utility Tunneling) as well as innovative solutions for the efficient installation of pipelines underground.

Engineers at Herrenknecht set out to build an industrial internet of things (IIoT) platform that provided insight into live and historic data for all their tunnel boring machines (TBMs). These machines have thousands of sensors generating high velocity data, sometimes in remote areas with limited connectivity. The company chose InfluxDB to collect and manage the telemetry data for its TBMs because the platform is open source, has a range of products to accommodate growth, and runs on multiple architectures. As Herrenknecht iterated with InfluxDB, moving to InfluxDB Enterprise reduced operating costs by one-third and delivered a stable product with reliable and reputable response times for all queries.

InfluxDays presentation

Herrenknecht AG presented at InfluxDays North America 2021. In this talk, they provided an overview of how they use InfluxDB to collect and store IIoT data on hundreds of tunneling construction projects, how they’re transferring this data into the cloud over unreliable network connections and what kind of insights they’re getting out of it.