The situation
ADT is a leader in the security and smart home protection industry, providing premium security systems for homes and businesses. The company offers comprehensive security products and services such as cameras, sensors, smart home solutions, monitoring plans and more. ADT consistently ranks as one of the top home security systems, protecting more than six million residential and small business customers with its equipment.
The challenge
ADT had a strategic goal to migrate operations to cloud-based systems in 2027. However, its existing control hardware couldn’t support a transfer to a cloud-based system. Furthermore, ADT’s weigh scale was outdated and needed to be upgraded.
The customer knew it needed a modern control system in place that could manage existing conveyors while automating, optimizing and streamlining their current operations and being prepared for eventual cloud migration when the time came. Any solution also had to be implemented with minimal downtime so that the business wouldn’t face any significant disruptions.
Having worked successfully with HOJ Innovations before, ADT turned to them again for this project, confident they’d be able to deliver the upgrade properly and seamlessly.
“This project was a complex upgrade where security was just as critical as the technical execution,” said CEO of HOJ Innovations Tim Hoj. “Our team of experts put the preparation work upfront so that we could deliver a clean and secure solution onsite. We’re proud to have built something that serves ADT today and sets them up for where they’re headed.”
The Solution To execute the upgrade, HOJ deployed its standard Beckhoff IPC, leveraging its own existing library so that the company could resolve programming issues before work began, minimize security exposure and keep on-site time to a minimum.
Before arriving to ADT’s facility, the HOJ team conducted thorough testing and verification of the system’s functionality and compatibility off-site. This ensured that the bulk of any potential software issues were identified and resolved in advance and any problems encountered onsite would be with the hardware. This helped keep the project within the designated timeline and the risk profile low.
Once the HOJ team was onsite, they verified new control system’s connection to ADT’s host system and confirmed integration before taking the old system offline. Nothing was cut until the team was confident the transition would hold.
The HOJ team arrived at ADT’s Atlanta distribution center on a Thursday and upgraded the system by Monday, requiring just one day of downtime.
The result
With the control panel upgrade complete, ADT now has a modernized foundation, ready for what comes next. The new system is cloud-ready, positioning ADT for a seamless migration whenever it’s ready to execute.
Day-to-day operations were optimized as well. The ADT team can monitor the system remotely from their office, with full visibility into activity, alarms and issues as they happen on the floor, reducing response times and keeping operations running smoothly. HOJ was also able to successfully replace ADT’s weigh scale within the project window. With an updated scale integrated in the system, the ADT team can move forward with confidence in its enhanced daily operations.
“Working with HOJ was an easy choice for our team,” said Edward Williams, ADT’s Atlanta distribution center director. “The scope of this project was significant, with a major upgrade on a short timeline and security adding another layer. The HOJ team rose to the challenge and exceeded our expectations, delivering with not only a modern system, but improvements to our day-to-day operations and a path towards our future goals.”
