The Connected and Automated Car Wash

Edge Routing Delivers Always-On Connectivity for National Car Washes Chains

The owners and operators of car wash businesses need turn-key solutions to run automated equipment, point-of-sale systems, self-service kiosks, video surveillance devices, and more.

For standalone or franchise operations to succeed, the IT professionals they employ require cloud-based remote management platforms capable of providing real-time data and analytics.

Whether you operations are completely autonomous or employee guided your business stands to lose thousands of dollars anytime data stops flowing to the cloud.

Trying to track the tremendous amount of IoT data related to Wi-Fi performance, sensor health, data usage, and more has been difficult to manage historically. Their IT teams were always on the lookout for solutions that could help channel all their data through a single pane of glass. Unified network management, critical to their success, wasn’t widely available — until now.

The Challenge

Managing Business-Critical Connectivity on a Single Platform

End-to-end, self-service car washes have are revolutionizing an industry that used to rely heavily on in-person intervention and troubleshooting. Achieving 24/7/365 remote network access to manage everything from their automated machinery to PCI-compliant POS data requires robust and reliable connectivity.

Any downtime in operations is costly. Deploying technical support specialists to troubleshoot network breakdowns defeats the operational efficiencies and cost savings that self-service car washes were designed to create.

From both a LAN and WAN perspective, network downtime causes automated car washing facilities significant problems. Especially for multi-location enterprises that depend heavily upon data-centric software to optimize ongoing operations. Moreover, they need solutions capable of keeping some of their key systems operating independent of the cloud should network outages occur.

The Solution

Cloud-Based Platforms with Wireless Edge Routers

With automated car wash facilities requiring end-to-end network connectivity solutions to manage all their data, solutions available from the experts at USAT can greatly improve operational efficiency with seamless integration and continuous cloud-based control.

Purpose-built Cradlepoint wireless edge routers combined with NetCloud Services for Branch offer secure, reliable, and versatile Wireless WAN connectivity that can be easily integrated into your car wash’s cloud management platform for centralized monitoring and data management.

With this solution, the cellular and Wi-Fi status data of your automated car washes’ can be integrated on their primary data platform via APIs, offering a single pane through which an automated car wash’s operators can monitor, assess, and effectively respond to any issues that arise with machinery, their network, customer information, and more.

One car wash was able to develop an edge computing application via the Cradlepoint routers and NetCloud Container Orchestrator, a tool that supports containers created in Docker Hub. Doing so allowed them to keep some of their critical processes running on-site so operations can continue even if total communication loss were to occur.

And with facilities scattered across vast footprints, some locations can be nearer to cell towers than others. Our solutions engineers are capable of mapping your individual locations relative to nearby cellular networks and custom select ideal antenna pairings for both short and long range connections.

Through partnerships with top antenna manufacturers like Poynting, we can provide rugged and reliable outdoor antennas, like the XPOL-1-5G (urban), XPOL-2-5G (suburban), or LPDA-92 (rural) to ensure each of your facilities achieves maximum signal strength and reliability.

The Results

Seamless Automated 5G Cellular Failover

With the seamless integration of LAN and WAN that the above Cradlepoint solutions from USAT provide, everything that self-service car washes need to function — from their automated machinery and POS systems to remote monitoring functions — remains online regardless of network status.

Wireless WAN routers from Cradlepoint are designed to function with multiple carriers offering both 4G and 5G, in addition to wired alternatives. This gives automated car washes the versatility to run cellular as either the primary or failover connection at any site.

At each car wash location, Cradlepoint all-purpose routers from USAT offer the immediacy of cellular connectivity from the first day of operations. For business owners weighing the options of wired or wireless WAN, one of the major advantages of wireless WAN is that cellular connectivity is available right away.

Lastly, edge computing, which is much easier to implement through Cradlepoint NetCloud, gives automated car washes the ability to run critical processes in the rare event of a total loss of communication.

The Team

Device Provisioning, Activation and Installation Services

For more than 25 years, USAT has offered and delivered enterprise-grade connectivity solutions to businesses with multiple local, regional, and national branch locations. Our clients trust us to deliver expert support for every aspect of their business-critical connectivity projects. From initial planning and device provisioning, to on-site installation, our skilled solutions engineers assess your needs and design custom solutions — providing your business with all the hardware and software it needs to meet your exacting requirements.

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