Case Study: ALPLA boosts factory efficiency and gains 250x faster real-time analytics with Crate.io

Industry 4.0 Powered by Crate IoT Data Platform Increases Factory Efficiency

ALPLA, a global leader in plastic packaging with 172 locations and 18,300 employees, faced rising personnel costs and declining operational effectiveness as increasingly complex production machinery generated massive sensor volumes (900 sensor types and thousands of readings per second). Their initial SQL Server approach required hundreds of tables and delivered dashboard charts that took 3–5 minutes to update, preventing real‑time supervision and centralized “mission control” monitoring needed to guide less experienced operators.

ALPLA migrated to the Crate.io Crate IoT Data Platform (powered by CrateDB), using its dynamic schema, distributed architecture and in‑memory columnar indexes to combine sensor streams into a single table and scale economically. The result: dashboard queries run about 250x faster (milliseconds instead of minutes), enabling 24x7 centralized mission control that directs floor staff via tablets and HoloLenses, reduces expert headcount and personnel costs, enables cross‑plant analysis, and improves overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

ALPLA

Jodok Schaeffler

General Manager