Professional coffee machines come with a maintenance contract at purchase. However, manufacturers lack sufficient information coffee shops about the usage of their machines for instance, whether a machine serves 2 or 60 cups of coffee per hour. Without real-time data to monitor machine usage, technicians are required to render a monthly maintenance service on the machines, which may be either too frequent or inadequate for the coffee machines. Founded in 2014, qiio has developed a complete, end-to-end IoT solution comprising hardware, software, connectivity, cloud services, and operation. Everything customers need to securely connect, monitor and control their products via an online dashboard is delivered. We take the complexity out of the IoT, creating “off-the-shelf” solutions customized to customer requirements within 4-8 weeks. Thermoplan, which has been proving fully automatic coffee machines to one of the world’s largest coffee house chains since 1999, has identified the potential of qiio’s technology leading to the signing of a partnership. The company, which was founded in 1974 and known for its coffee machine brand 'Black&White', is the leading manufacturer of premium, fully automatic coffee machines in modern design for the hotel, restaurant, and gastronomy sector. Thermoplan is represented in 75 countries and manages a global network of over 200 certified distribution and service partners. Based on embedded sensors and qiio’s IoT connectivity hardware and cloud platform, Thermoplan is now able to remotely monitor machine usage and other critical parameters in real-time. As a result, they only need to send out technicians when maintenance is actually required, saving on average one service visit per machine per year. With thousands of machines installed, this will result in significant annual savings. “Our client expects smoothly running machines with minimum down-time,” said Sylvia Schoeberl, Head of Marketing, “For Thermoplan, maintenance is a significant part of overall costs. With qiio’s IoT solution, we have achieved the optimum balance between the two, resulting in a reliable, uninterrupted supply of great-tasting coffee which is the foundation of our client’s business.” (Press release)