Client

Founded in 2018 as a spin-out from Shell TechWorks, Cumulus Digital Systems (Cumulus) is a Massachusetts-based software company with offices in Boston, MA, and Houston, TX.  

Cumulus connects workers, tools, and data to its cloud-hosted Internet of Tools™ (IoT) platform to make industrial facilities safer, cleaner, and more productive. By collecting data from digitally enabled tools in the field, Cumulus’ platform provides maintenance and construction managers with real-time, paperless quality assurance and progress tracking, eliminating costly and unnecessary rework on the job. Cumulus’ flagship application is the patented and award-winning Smart Torque System™, which prevents leaks, rework, and unplanned downtime by managing safety-critical bolting activities during new construction and facility turnarounds.

Currently, Cumulus serves customers around the world in the energy, data center, and pharmaceutical industries.

Challenges

As other industries adopt new technologies, industrial maintenance and construction lag behind on the road to digitalization. On the way to transform the industrial workforce, Cumulus strives to continuously improve its IoT platform to ensure end-to-end quality and productivity management for critical works on site.

Given that the platform is used by large sites and facilities, it must be configured to address their specific requirements. However, Cumulus needed additional development resources to provide specialized services while driving core development.

The company searched for a value-add vendor with deep expertise in creating custom engineering solutions that automate specialized domain knowledge and allow for easy stakeholder collaboration. Known for its unmatched industry expertise, AMC Bridge was selected for the project.

Solution

Having gathered initial requirements from the client, AMC Bridge set to extend platform capabilities and enhance performance and security while keeping the interface friendly and intuitive for the end users.

As a result, the AMC Bridge team developed the following new microservices to extend the platform capabilities:

• Individual Productivity Service allows tracking and improving personnel performance.
• Workflow Builder, coupled with the Torque Fit 2 application, lets the end user create and adjust the steps for flange tightening without changing the source code.
• Tools Usage Service aggregates and visualizes information on the usage of a wrench, pump, gauge, and other tools.
• Flange Edit Ticket Service allows customization of the flange tightening acceptance workflow by tracking changes of specific flange properties.

In parallel, the team upgraded the following microservices to improve the platform performance:

• Site Productivity Service improves Control Center performance by solving slow data representation issues and eliminating the risk of no data at all, in case of a large number of flanges.  
• Overtorque Ticket Service improves process adherence by tracking over-torqued bolts and creates notifications when retightening is needed.
• Master Record Service enables simultaneous real-time operations with flange details for multiple users.
• Maintenance Service automates data upload and creates events of a particular type for better flange usage monitoring.

Process

Having clarified the client’s business requirements, AMC Bridge proceeded to improve the existing microservices. In line with that, the team actively developed the new microservices to enhance platform flexibility. Aimed to protect sensitive information entrusted to the platform, the team also improved web security policy and access security to the existing centralized core data service.

Consistently achieving code quality, the AMC Bridge team timely delivered the executed work packages for functional, regression, exploratory, and automated testing. As a result, AMC Bridge helped maximize the efficiency and accuracy of the system functionality when releasing it to the client.

To involve all stakeholders in the development process, regular daily meetings and biweekly demo presentations were held to discuss the raised issues and present the implemented scope of work.

Results

AMC Bridge improved Smart Torque System performance, allowing end users to get critical data quickly and perform site maintenance efficiently. The team boosted end-user data protection, strengthening Cumulus’ services security to comply with SCO2 certification standards.

Seamlessly integrated with the platform, the new microservices add value to the industrial workforce transformation from day one. In addition, the upgraded microservices enhance the platform flexibility and ease its customization to satisfy the unique requirements of end users. A user-friendly UI significantly minimizes investments in training and becomes an integral part of the industrial workflow, increasing the list of customers that use Smart Torque System for their business purposes.

The dedicated efforts of the AMC Bridge team have been highly appreciated by the client. Joshua Napoli, Co-Founder & VP of Software, said:

“Thank you all for filling gaps and maintaining our web security best practices!”

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