Elly Yates-Roberts |
Internet of things platform provider Braincube has helped an energy company to increase its yield and quality by optimising its processing with artificial intelligence (AI).
The energy company produces additives for lubricating oils and fuels for a leading global energy producer. The firm began working with Braincube to get more information on the production of a specific chemical so it could increase yield and quality. Braincube helped the energy company to build a digital twin of its production line, which enabled it to uncover new operating parameters.
The energy company’s lead process engineer also wanted to empower its employees with the Braincube partnership. The engineer worked with technicians, operations, maintenance and fellow engineers to develop a Lean sigma framework – a problem-solving and business improvement methodology – to optimise the firm’s production. As a result of this, the energy company has been able to reduce its production costs and has lowered its energy consumption.
Although the teams already had access to data visualisation tools, historians and other analysis tools, they needed to build a data set to encompass their process from raw materials to finished product.
Braincube’s digital twin allowed the company to use its Advanced Analysis App to increase its distillation process by 36 per cent, which was 16 per cent higher than the company’s initial target.
“With Braincube, nothing is theoretical or from a model,” said the team lead. “It’s only using our historical data to explore the influence of parameters.”
The Advanced Analysis App allows the company to find new discoveries, leading to an increased insights flow rate of 20 to 30 per cent.
“Braincube elevates what we already know about our process and gives prescriptions on how to make changes based on the most impactful parameters,” said the team lead. “We uncovered at least $500,000 in savings each year and we continue to move forward with new discoveries.”
Braincube’s technology has also enabled the company to track, report and improve operator variability.
“Braincube empowers us to act as Citizen Data Scientists,” said the team lead “The data is always structured and ready to use, so there isn’t the need to rely on an IT team to pull it for us.”