“There are very few players in the Industrial IoT space who understand ground level needs and solid solution capabilities on cloud. We were able to quickly integrate Flentas’ IoT Gateway with our construction Hoist PLC.”
Ganesh SahaniGM ITSpartan
Manufacturing · Industrial IoT · Remote Asset Monitoring
How Spartan Engineering replaced on-site machine visits with remote AWS IoT monitoring
Spartan Engineering Industries is a Mumbai-based manufacturer and lessor of heavy construction machinery, in business since 1971. Its hoist machines ran on OEM-provided PLCs with no internet connectivity, so every maintenance check, breakdown, or basic troubleshooting call required an engineer to travel to the site. Flentas built an AWS IoT solution connecting each machine to the cloud, enabling remote monitoring, tracking, and troubleshooting without a site visit.
- Spartan Engineering
- 40+ years in construction equipment manufacturing
- Fleet of leased hoist machines
- AWS IoT-based remote monitoring
At a Glance
- Remote operational capabilities enabled
- 5
- Site visits needed for routine monitoring
- Zero
- Connectivity layer for real-time data and location tracking
- 4G/GSM
The Challenge
Machines that couldn't be seen or reached remotely
Spartan's leased hoist machines were fully controllable through their onboard PLCs, but those PLCs were constrained devices with no path to the internet. Every routine check or fault meant sending an engineer to the site.
No usage visibility
Machine usage couldn't be tracked remotely, making metering and maintenance scheduling manual and reactive.
No sensor visibility
Critical sensor readings were only accessible on-site, delaying fault detection.
No asset tracking
Equipment location couldn't be monitored, leaving misplacement and misuse undetected.
The Approach
A gateway-to-cloud pipeline built for constrained devices
Flentas designed and implemented the end-to-end IoT solution in four layers: device connectivity, resilient data transport, cloud ingestion, and application integration.
Deployed an IoT Gateway on each machine, pulling PLC register data over Modbus ASCII and connecting to AWS IoT Core via an integrated 4G module.
Added GSM-based location tracking for asset movement, with SD-card data buffering on the gateway to handle downstream network issues.
Used MQTT for downstream communication to AWS IoT Core, with a Pi Zero-based module handling gateway software deployment.
Built the data pipeline from PLC → IoT Gateway → IoT Core → Kinesis → Database, exposed through REST APIs consumed by Spartan's existing O&M web and mobile applications.
Business Outcome
Remote visibility, faster response, fewer wasted trips
Remote
Secure operations, with critical machinery actuation possible without an on-site visit.
Simplified maintenance tracking through usage-based metering and job scheduling.
Efficient asset tracking
With stakeholders alerted to equipment misplacement or misuse.
Fraud detection process established
Using sensor data to flag warranty-void scenarios in false claims.
Faster on-ground response
With fault notifications routed directly to the operations team for quicker MTTR.
Technologies & Partners
Built on the AWS IoT stack
- AWS IoT Core
- Amazon Kinesis
- Modbus ASCII
- MQTT
- GSM-based location tracking
- Pi Zero gateway module
- REST APIs
Common Questions
What manufacturers usually ask about this kind of IoT retrofit
Get Started
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