Company: Dexory
Industry: Robotics and Data Intelligence
Dexory is a warehouse intelligence platform that helps logistics providers maximize visibility into daily inventory operations, using autonomous robots to gather accurate real-time data and generate actionable insights.
Challenge
In complex warehouse environments, goods constantly flow in and out, making it difficult for logistics providers to monitor and optimize warehouse activity. Dexory helps organizations address this challenge — known as the “visibility gap” — through its fleet of autonomous robots. But Dexory also struggled with their own “visibility gap” when it came to observing and gaining deeper insights into the performance of their robotic solutions.
Monitoring critical metrics and systems, such as power consumption, actuator performance, and sensor functionality, is essential, but high-frequency data collection (at 1Hz or 10Hz) led to scalability challenges. Additionally, the unpredictable nature of warehouse environments required a deep understanding of how variable network connections and external factors, like temperature, humidity, and dust contamination, affected robot operations. Without robust observability, it was difficult for Dexory to identify patterns and make data-driven decisions.
Solution
Dexory initially built their metrics system in 2019 using the TICK stack — Telegraf, InfluxDB, Chronograf, and Kapacitor — to create a side-channel for fleet status notifications, such as lost connectivity or unexpected power loss. While this solution worked well initially, scaling proved challenging due to reliability demands and having to maintain a self-hosted system. Seeking a more efficient approach, Dexory transitioned to Grafana Cloud, which minimized operational overhead while providing robust monitoring and alerting capabilities. As data flowed into Grafana Cloud, the team quickly recognized its full potential, particularly in visualization and reporting tools.
Impact
- Accessible metrics: As Dexory scaled, the growing demand for metrics led to the adoption of a federated observability model, with Grafana Cloud serving as a key tool that empowers internal teams to take ownership of their metrics and reporting.
- Single source of truth: All data is centralized in one location, providing a single source of truth while avoiding both centralized control and decentralized chaos.
- Practical applications: Grafana Cloud has facilitated real-world problem-solving, such as identifying charging failures due to mains voltage sag and diagnosing a rare segfault issue in a third-party library through a mission-specific dashboard.
- Business insights: The strategy team uses Grafana Cloud for insights into long-term performance and operational trends, creating business-relevant metrics that support funding processes and overall company goals.
“Having the tools in place to handle scaling is going to be important. So for us, coming back to why we are using Grafana Cloud, that’s one of the key reasons: it’s really been one of those things that lets us scale very quickly.”
Matt MacLeod, VP Software
Conclusion
Three key takeaways emerge from Dexory’s journey of scaling observability. First, observability is essential for scaling operations; having the right data at the right time is crucial to make informed decisions about where to invest time and resources. Second, empowering teams with a self-service observability model is vital to keep pace with rapid growth — providing teams with the necessary tools and training to manage their metrics has made a significant impact. Finally, organizations should anticipate having more data than expected. As the fleet expanded, the volume of data collected increased significantly, requiring teams to continually seek more to support their growth. Designing observability systems with scalability in mind is crucial, and for Dexory, a cloud solution like Grafana Cloud has been invaluable, allowing the focus to remain on core operations without the burden of managing infrastructure.
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