Dynisco’s business strategy is to bring “rheology to the masses” by making its polymer test and instrumentation equipment more sophisticated and easier to use, at more competitive price points and localized for customers around the world. To further that strategy, Dynisco® is using Windows 10 IoT Core to help bring products to market four times faster while adding functionality. Rework rates have dropped by 20 percent for early customers, and Dynisco expects its worldwide customer base to grow by at least 25 percent.
Everything we do is about enabling our customers. … Microsoft does the most to enable us to focus on delivering for our customers—and leapfrogging the competition."
John Biagioni: President, Dynisco
Three years ago, John Biagioni saw a potential opportunity for his company, Dynisco—if it could make the right move.
“The right move would open markets to us around the world,” says Biagioni, President of Dynisco, the maker of pressure sensors, instrumentation and polymer test equipment. “It would facilitate our transformation from a hardware company to a software company and enable us to bring more sophisticated, competitive products to market faster and at lower prices. That right move was Windows 10 IoT Core and the single board computer (SBC) platform.”
A strategic choice to anticipate the market
Dynisco’s choice, Windows 10 IoT Core, is an optimized version of Windows that enables building smaller-footprint, connected devices that deliver the same security and management capabilities that manufacturers expect from Windows. Together with Azure Services, it gives manufacturers like Dynisco a range of capabilities from operating system to cloud from a single vendor.
The Azure Services that Dynisco uses includes Azure Stream Analytics, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Blob Storage, and Azure IoT Hub Device Provisioning Service. Dynisco also uses Windows 10 IoT Core Services, the subscription service that allows over-the-air updates to Windows 10 IoT Core OS. “Windows 10 IoT Core Services, with the guaranteed 10-year release of reliability and security updates, makes it a cost effective platform to develop. Having over-the-air updates are a big feature we’re looking to take advantage of in coming months,” says Biagioni.
Biagioni and his colleagues made their selection strategically, considering not only where the market for connected devices was, but also where it’s headed.
“Everything we do is about enabling our customers,” explains Biagioni. “If we’re not solving their pain points and raising their ROI, it’s not worth doing. We looked at Microsoft’s leadership in the market, its investments in IoT, its partner ecosystem, and the Microsoft AI and IoT Insider Labs we’d have access to. Microsoft does the most to enable us to focus on delivering for our customers—and leapfrogging the competition.”
For example, one of the big differences that Dynisco exploits is the ability to write its code to the Windows OS rather than to the microprocessor hardware, as it’s done for the tens of thousands of devices it’s sold over the past 50 years.
“By writing to Windows, we avoid the traditional issues of writing to chips and USB sticks,” he says. “We no longer worry about hardware support and localization. We have tons of reusable libraries at our disposal.”
More powerful products, faster time-to-market
All that has a major impact on time-to-market, with Dynisco’s Windows 10 IoT Core–based products coming to market four times faster than its previous products. And not just faster—better, too. Biagioni points to a new, patented feature in the Dynisco LMI5500™ Melt Flow Indexer, based on geolocation services in Windows 10 IoT Core and Azure. It identifies the latitude of the product’s location and adjusts its readings by miniscule but necessary amounts to increase accuracy.
“We were always able to capture the sensor data, but couldn’t make use of it in this way to increase accuracy for customers around the world. With Windows 10 IoT Core and Azure, we can,” says Biagioni.
Beyond using Windows 10 IoT Core and Azure to make more sophisticated products, Dynisco is using them to respond to specific customers with more customized products. A few years back, Dynisco declined a customer’s request to customize an older-generation product for the Cyrillic language because the weeks-long development process would have been cost-prohibitive. “With Windows 10 IoT Core, it’s a matter of turning on a language pack—less than a day. We’re better positioned to give our customers exactly what they want with little incremental work on our part.”
Making customers 20 percent more successful
What Dynisco’s customers want are rheological equipment, such as online rheometers, they can use to increase their own product yields, quality, and profits. Biagioni envisions Dynisco’s new generation of rheological equipment based on Windows 10 IoT Core delivering on that requirement.
“In our early work with our customers, we see them able to reduce scrap and the need for rework by about 20 percent,” he says. “That’s a direct contributor to their bottom lines and they know it. When we concluded recent trials and asked our customers to return the beta equipment, they were so happy with the equipment and results that they didn’t want to give it back. We’ve never seen that before.”
Expanding the customer base by 25 percent
A key part of Dynisco’s business strategy is something Biagioni calls “rheology for the masses”—that is, expanding the market for the company’s test and rheological equipment by making it accessible to entirely new classes of customers. The localization capabilities Dynisco implements with Windows 10 IoT Core is one aspect of that strategy. The company already makes 60 percent of its sales outside of the US; Biagioni expects the number of national markets it can easily reach will now double. Factoring in the maturity of those markets, Biagioni says the customer base should grow by at least 25 percent.
One factor in that growth: more-competitive pricing based on the cost efficiencies gained from Windows 10 IoT Core. For example, Biagioni points to the Dynisco ViscoIndicator™, an online rheometer designed for the thermoplastics resin industry. Customers can purchase and install the equipment for one-third to one-fifth the price of competitive systems.
“At that price point, there are tens of thousands of customers we can serve that we couldn’t serve before—and that our competitors still can’t serve.”