The whole is greater than the sum of its parts – we research and develop all of our technologies in-house to ensure that each part improves efficiency across the whole vertical farm.
Big data plays an important role in vertical farming. It helps our team to optimize plant growth along with the vertical farm’s power consumption. Specialized software is required to crunch and correlate all the data on various environmental parameters.
At YesHealth Group, our central control system constantly monitors air temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide levels, water temperature, pH and dissolved oxygen levels in the water. By analyzing these data points, our experts are able to improve plant growth year-on-year.
This also enables vertical farm operators to optimize power consumption and reduce overhead costs. Optimal settings vary between vertical farms, depending on regional differences in climate, water quality and power supply, therefore collecting accurate regional data is essential.
The more regional data we collect from our partners worldwide, the more efficient our partners vertical farms will become. Optimum efficiency can be attained within three to six months of testing, which takes place in the final phase of vertical farm construction and technology transfer.
Four types of software are integrated with vertical farming hardware to form the YesHealth Group central control system — manufacturing execution system (MES), enterprise resource planning (ERP), internet of things (IOT) and artificial intelligence (AI).
MES is responsible for reporting tasks that are either automated or performed by vertical farming personnel. This type of software is crucial for any manufacturing or production base, as it records the implementation of standard operating procedures for efficiency and accountability.
IOT is integrated with MES and ERP to collect data from across the entire vertical farm and its supply chain. This allows vertical farm operators to optimize plant growth and power consumption in realtime. Additionally, some tasks can be programmed in the central control system.
The next phase of software innovation at YesHealth Group will be integrating AI and automation within our central control system. AI will enable us to progress beyond agriculture 4.0 and smart farming, towards agriculture 5.0 and the possibility of unmanned vertical farming solutions.