- 5 min read
In modern manufacturing, data is only valuable if teams can see it, trust it, and act on it in real time.
For Rockline, a leading manufacturer of wet wipes and everyday consumer products, that visibility was suddenly at risk.
The Challenge: Data Without Visibility
Rockline relied heavily on sensor data to monitor product quality and production performance. However, the retirement of their legacy system created several challenges:
No centralized platform for real-time visualization
Limited ability to securely move plant-floor data to the cloud
Increased manual effort to generate reports
A lack of scalability for future analytics and machine learning initiatives
Without a replacement architecture, Rockline risked losing operational insight and slowing continuous improvement efforts.
A Secure, Scalable IoT Data Pipeline
To solve this, our team designed and implemented a modern IoT data pipeline built for security, scalability, and long-term growth.
At the edge, Kepware was configured to collect key data streams from Rockline’s PLCs and plant sensors. FlowFuse (Node-RED) served as the orchestration layer, handling message routing and formatting data into a Unified Namespace (UNS) structure to ensure consistency across systems.
From there, data was securely transmitted through Azure IoT Hub, providing a reliable gateway from the plant floor to the cloud. With TSM retired, Azure Data Explorer (ADX) became the primary platform for real-time visualization and analytics, restoring Rockline’s ability to monitor production performance at scale.
To support future innovation, Databricks was also integrated into the Azure environment. This enabled sensor data to flow directly into machine learning workflows, creating a foundation for predictive maintenance and advanced analytics.
Insight, Efficiency and a Path Forward
With the new architecture in place, Rockline gained immediate and long-term benefits:
Real-time visibility into production and quality metrics
Secure, reliable sensor data transfer from edge to cloud
Faster reporting with significantly less manual effort
Scalable dashboards built in Azure Data Explorer
A future-ready foundation for predictive analytics and machine learning
Most importantly, Rockline transformed its data from a passive record of past events into a real-time asset that drives faster decisions, continuous improvement, and long-term innovation.
- Digital Transformation, Industrial Factory Automation, IT/OT Convergence, Manufacturing Analytics & Data Insights, Operational Efficiency, Smart Manufacturing
