M
anufacturer visualizes electricity
usage and boosts energy savings
with Visio Pro for Office 365
“By making energy usage visible with Microsoft
Visio, we can now plan ahead to save energy
and evaluate cost-reduction options easily.”
—Masashi Kawashima, Manager,
Management Planning Division, SAXA, Inc.
To better reserve energy in a country with limited natural resources,
Japanese manufacturer SAXA used Microsoft Visio Pro for
Office 365 and Microsoft cloud solutions for real-time monitoring of
electricity usage. With contextual energy visualization, SAXA and its
customers are achieving big gains in energy savings and more accurate
energy planning.
SAXA, Inc.
www.saxa.co.jp
1,300 employees
Japan
Manufacturing
Company profile
Headquartered in Japan, SAXA is a leading
manufacturer of information communication
equipment. Its 13 member companies offer
superior hardware and services for office use,
including business phones and networking,
video camera and security systems.
Partner profile
Meister Corporation
www.mster.co.jp
“These data-enhanced
plans drawn in Visio raise
awareness of energy
usage that general reports
of power consumption
cannot match.”
—Uichiro Nozawa,
Executive Director and Division
Director, Meister Corporation
Business needs
Operating in a country with limited natural resources, energy conservation and CO2
reduction are essential to Japanese businesses. Japan’s 2011 earthquake further
increased the need for energy-saving functions and remains a top priority today.
As a leading Japanese manufacturer of information communication equipment and
services for office use, SAXA saw an opportunity to develop an environment
visualization system leveraging the power of the Internet of Things (IoT)—with today’s
advancements in computing platforms, sensors, connectivity and data insights. SAXA
hoped to improve its own energy management and create new customer value by
oering the solution as a service to its business customers.
Solution
Working with Microsoft partner Meister Corporation, SAXA combined its own wireless
LAN-ready sensors, that track temperature, humidity and electricity, with Microsoft Visio
Pro for Oce 365 and Microsoft cloud solutions to create the SAXA M2M Environment
Visualization Solution.
“Energy waste is most often due to human error, such as forgetting to turn o the lights
or unknowingly using excessive air conditioning,” explains Uichiro Nozawa, Executive
Director and Division Director at Meister Corporation. “The principal purpose of the
SAXA M2M Environment Visualization Solution is to notify people on a daily basis when
energy related to their PC, business phone, or other common item is being wasted.”
Cloud scalability across the organization
At the core of the solution is the cloud. With its member companies and development
and manufacturing sites dispersed throughout Japan, SAXA believed an organizational
rollout would need the scale of cloud computing.
SAXA and Meister selected Microsoft Azure for its cloud infrastructure, nding it
easier to implement than other cloud services and allows them to deploy in common
environments using Microsoft Visual Studio.
In real time, more than 50 SAXA wireless LAN sensors (WL100 and WL110) collect office
temperature, humidity, power consumption, and other vital information. That data is
then transmitted via RSS feeds to Microsoft Azure and accumulated in an Azure SQL
database, processing more than 2,500 database calls each day.
Contextual energy visualization
The power of the solution lands in the visualization of the data. The data collected from
sensors is displayed in real time on a facility oor plan created in Microsoft Visio Pro for
Oce 365, using Visio’s rich data graphics.
“We realized that data should be shown in oor plan format to let people know how,
when and where energy is being wasted within a building or equipment layout,”
Nozawa san explains. “These data-enhanced plans drawn in Visio raise awareness of
energy usage that general reports of power consumption cannot match.”
SAXA customers or employees can then monitor energy levels using a Visio-based IoT
dashboard in a browser across devices.
“If you want to change
the lighting to LEDs, you
can see the impact on
electricity by quickly
swapping Visio shapes
which has relevant
parameters in Shape Data.”
—Masashi Kawashima,
Manager, Management Planning
Division, SAXA, Inc.
Benets
Big gains in energy savings
With the M2M Environment Visualization Solution, SAXA and its customers now have
easy access to real-time monitoring of temperature, humidity, and power
consumption in a visually-compelling way.
As a result, SAXA is able to save energy in both its manufacturing facilities and
oce buildings. For example, by displaying electricity visually, the solution can
immediately indicate when and where lighting has been left on during a lunch break.
SAXA customers have also been able to save energy and reduce costs—adjusting
temperatures or lighting as needed.
More accurate planning
By making energy usage visible, SAXA and its customers can also see the trend of their
energy usage and more easily create a plan to reduce their individual consumption.
“We can now plan ahead to save energy and evaluate cost-reduction options easily,”
says Masashi Kawashima, Manager, Management Planning Division at SAXA. “For
example, if you want to change the lighting to LEDs, you can see the impact on
electricity by quickly swapping Visio shapes which has relevant parameters in Shape
Data. By measuring current power consumption within each building and comparing
with newer energy-ecient strategies and equipment, you can develop more accurate
capital expenditure plans across your facilities.”
And at a glance, they can understand the impact visualized by Visio.
“With Visio, you can revise
plans simply by moving
equipment stencils with
the drag-and-drop
feature. It’s a much
simpler experience than
CAD-based tools.”
“Plans drawn in Visio show you the physical relationship, environmental background,
and spatial context,” Nozawa san explains. “They allow you to model energy-saving
options with the consideration of the building’s characteristics. For example, if you
conrm temperatures and humidity on a at plane with the consideration of window
dimensions, you may see that heat comes from the large amount of external light. You
will realize you only need to buy blinds rather than install a new air conditioner. “
Visio is also helpful to rearrange the location of servers and equipment that aect
the environment. “You can revise plans simply by moving equipment stencils with
the drag-and-drop feature,” says Nozawa san. “It’s a much simpler experience than
CAD-based tools.”
As SAXA moves forward, it plans to o
Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Service to analyze additional information like historic,
meteorological, and environmental data, and use Visio to visualize the rich data.
er electricity forecasting services, using the
For more information
——Uichiro Nozawa,
Executive Director and Division
Director, Meister Corporation
Software and services
Microsoft Visio Pro for Oce 365
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure SQL Database
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada
Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States who are deaf
or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at
(800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary.
To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
Microsoft Oce 365
The new Oce provides anywhere access to your familiar Oce applications—plus
email, calendar, video conferencing, and your most current documents—on almost any
device, from PCs to smartphones to tablets.
For more information about Microsoft Oce 365, go to:
www.oce365.com
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published June 2016
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