The question

Galloo Group is one of the leading recycling companies in Western Europe. Every day, they give a second life to discarded consumer goods and factory scrap. However, they still worked a lot on paper and there was a lack of rapid communication with people and machines at the recycling sites. Visual inspections, for example, were carried out on the installation itself rather than via camera images. Result: loss of data and time.

Our answer

Outdoor WiFi. It facilitates communication with people via push-to-talk devices, and also allows real-time monitoring of machines such as weighbridges.

The real challenge

Setting up a wireless network in a WiFi unfriendly environment. The signal had to be received over large piles of recycling material that change location and get bigger and smaller. Moreover, there are two locations and the site is also just on the border between Belgium and France. An additional difficulty, because both countries have different regulations regarding private LTE networks. This is precisely why we opted for WiFi.

Technical specs

• The Wi-Fi was set up with high redundancy. That makes the network very reliable. The chance of loss of time and costs due to downtime is thus minimised.

• (Semi-)directional antennas cover the different zones of the site with multiple access points. So customers always receive a sufficient primary, secondary or tertiary signal. Even if someone stands behind a large pile of metal or concrete or moves across the site.

• The Wi-Fi network consists of two separate networks: a highly secured corporate network and a guest network for visiting truck drivers.

Extras?

To connect Galloo’s forty branches to the network, we installed an SD-WAN (software defined wide area network) connected to 4G. If the landline were to break down, this connection provides a back-up and continuity is guaranteed. So 4G makes the network stronger and it is also cheaper than international MPLS lines. The implementation immediately provided:

• a higher bandwidth
• higher availability thanks to the 4G back-up
• a lower operational cost

The cloud-based firewall also provides direct secure access to the internet and cloud-based services such as online applications. End users in the various branches can therefore get to work faster.

The result

We worked out this project together with Galloo’s IT department. Thanks to the zero-touch devices, Galloo could physically install the pre-configured devices themselves. e-BO Enterprises offered remote support. Galloo was impressed with our professional approach and positive collaboration. They were especially pleased with the budget-friendly solution we could offer them.