Industry: Chemical

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Brabo Platform: The AI-Driven Shift in Manufacturing You Need

In an exclusive feature with CIO Tech Outlook, Solulever’s CEO & Founder, Jitesh Kohli, shares the visionary approach behind Brabo, the world’s first AI-native IIoT platform. Brabo isn’t just another digital solution—it’s a game-changer for the manufacturing industry, offering seamless integration of AI, robust connectivity, and a modular design that adapts to unique operational needs.

Brabo empowers manufacturers with real-time insights and the flexibility to innovate at scale. Dive into the full article to explore how Brabo is setting new industry standards.

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Advancing Operational Excellence in the Rubber Chemical Sector

Brabo’s Role in Realizing Business Goals

Brabo’s introduction marked a turning point in manufacturing operations:

 

Client Profile

A leader in the rubber chemicals sector with a distinguished legacy spanning over four decades has solidified its position as a benchmark of technical prowess and client-focused services in the chemical industry. Celebrated for supplying high-quality products on a global scale, this prominent manufacturer in India has carved out a significant market share in the Rubber Chemicals sector, thereby establishing the industry standard.

With its state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities and a steadfast commitment to green chemistry, its operations epitomize manufacturing excellence, extending its prestigious export footprint across continents.

Their Digital Transformation journey, initiated with the integration of Solulever’s Brabo Factory Cloud Platform, represents not merely an upgrade but a foundational shift in their operational ethos.

 

Business Objectives

Challenges: The company had set steep improvement objectives in the area of “Critical Equipment Efficiency”. The existing setups did not allow the company to have real-time visibility into important operational variables like energy consumption. Further, there was a burning need for equipment monitoring, data-driven decision-making, and proactive asset management around critical shop-floor equipment.

Objectives: Brabo was introduced to meet these business objectives. The program’s objectives focused on real-time efficiency monitoring, comprehensive parameter monitoring, and implementing advanced control mechanics. The goal was set to drive towards better streamlined, more efficient, and more sustainable manufacturing operations.

 

Digitalization Journey Objectives

Efficiently addressing these critical business objectives, the program marked significant milestones:

  1. Critical Equipment Inefficiency: A lack of insight into fuel consumption, heat derivations, and combustion efficiency led to heightened energy consumption and emissions, undermining operational reliability.
  2. Enhancement of Real-Time Analysis: The lack of real-time data impeded proactive decision-making, resulting in environmental, energy, and cost inefficiencies.
  3. Heat Loss Calculations: Without precise calculations, they grappled with increased fuel consumption and process variability, impacting overall energy efficiency and process reliability.
  4. Legacy Operational Resilience: The absence of data-driven sustainability initiatives led to inefficient resource utilization, hindering their growth and innovation potential.

 

Business Impact

Brabo’s implementation led to transformative changes:

  1. Reduced Downtime and Breakdowns: Brabo’s intelligence led to a significant reduction in equipment downtime and breakdowns, enhancing overall productivity.
  2. Improved Efficiency and Maintenance Cost Reduction: The platform’s insights contribute to improved operational efficiency and lower maintenance costs.
  3. Operational Transparency and Enhanced Decision-Making: With Brabo, decision-making is now more data-driven, leading to increased operational transparency and efficiency.
  4. Strategic Benchmarking: Establishing benchmarks for efficiency and tracking progress over time.
  5. Data-Driven Excellence: Brabo has empowered them with deeper operational transparency and data-driven decision-making, further enhancing efficiency and strategic clarity.
  6. Energy Savings: The platform’s monitoring and control capabilities led to more efficient operations, reducing energy consumption and fuel costs.

 

Future Roadmap

Looking ahead, this collaborative partnership with Brabo is set to expand:

This partnership with Brabo symbolizes a significant stride towards a future where digital innovation is synonymous with operational excellence, environmental responsibility, and enhanced safety. This journey is not just a story of technological adoption but a blueprint for the future of the manufacturing industry.

Transform Your Manufacturing Landscape with Brabo: Ready to redefine your manufacturing operations? Discover how Brabo can tailor a digital solution for your unique challenges. Join the league of innovators and propel your business into a future of efficiency and growth.

Start Your Digital Transformation Journey today! 

 

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Elevating Manufacturing Efficiency through Digital Transformation

Global Agrochemical Excellence: Unveiling Our Client’s Profile

Our client stands as India’s premier agrochemical company, holding a distinguished position as the fifth-ranked global player in the field, with a presence spanning over 138 countries. As a pioneer in the realm of global food systems, the client’s integrated portfolio encompasses patented and post-patent agricultural solutions for diverse arable and specialty crops. These solutions span the entire crop value chain, covering biological, crop protection, seed treatment, and post-harvest segments. With market access to 90% of the world’s food production, our client’s mission revolves around fostering growth and advancement across the entire agricultural value chain, including growers, distributors, suppliers, and innovation partners.

 

Digital transformation emerged as the linchpin to expedited progress, promising to unlock new levels of efficiency through the judicious exploitation of process and equipment data.

 

Innovative Solutions for Smart Manufacturing

Solulever, a Dutch tech startup, partnered with a client to implement digital transformation via Brabo, a cutting-edge European manufacturing connectivity and intelligence platform.

Solulever’s strategy involved a dual-layer integration with Brabo. On the business layer, Brabo connected with the client’s SAP ERP, integrating key data like production planning and batch details. At the control layer, Brabo integrated with equipment using an OT adapter framework that supports various protocols, enhancing the Filling & Packaging line’s efficiency.

Brabo’s capabilities enabled comprehensive data collection, analysis, and process automation. This included monitoring assets and production in real time, managing KPIs, automating downtime analysis, and enhancing operational efficiency with GUI-driven asset modelling for precise equipment and process oversight.

Additionally, Brabo’s advanced analytics, predictive maintenance, and condition-based monitoring tools promised significant improvements in product quality and operational cost optimization, marking a leap towards smart manufacturing excellence.

 

From Vision to Reality: Measuring Success in Smart Manufacturing

The collaboration between Brabo and our esteemed client’s manufacturing units has yielded exceptional outcomes. Through the implementation of the cutting-edge Industry 4.0 platform, our client has experienced a significant transformation in their operational efficiency and productivity.

 

The following Key Impacts of Brabo’s Digital Transformation were observed:

  1. Comprehensive Shop Floor Visibility: Integrated Brabo’s Process Twin Suite and SCADA Visualizer for total operational oversight, transitioning from manual to a paperless environment.
  2. Digital Shop Floor Transition: Utilized Brabo’s Connected Worker Solutions for digital checklists, e-logbooks, and live KPI dashboards, enhancing productivity and reducing labor costs.
  3. Streamlined and Efficient Operations: Achieved highly streamlined operations through digital transformation, significantly enhancing operational efficiency.
  4. Proactive Issue Identification: Leveraged real-time alerts and notifications to minimize unplanned downtimes and ensure asset availability.
  5. Reduced Emergency Repairs: Continuous asset and operation monitoring led to fewer emergency repairs and disruptions.
  6. Optimized Production Processes: Enabled process optimization, cutting down on scrap and rework, thereby increasing production yield.
  7. Improved Product Quality: Enhanced product quality, reinforcing the client’s industry reputation for excellence.

Brabo’s integration has undeniably revolutionized our client’s manufacturing landscape, paving the way for smarter, more efficient operations. With a continued focus on innovation and technical expertise, our client remains committed to delivering exceptional products that inspire confidence and trust in their customers.

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Chem 4.0 simplified with open architecture platform

What can Industry 4.0 Platforms do for The Chemical Industry?

The developers can also use the data in real-time to deliver mission-critical use-cases with lightning speed and accurate analysis, thus preventing the companies from investing in expensive cloud-heavy platforms.

Organizations focused on enhancing their business operations can use the technology to improve their overall productivity and reduce potential risks. While it can also be used to generate new revenue streams for enterprises aiming to achieve non-linear growth.

“Brabo, a platform of platforms, developed by a European technology company, Solulever, aims to reduce the OT-IT costs for the plants by at least 30% with a quick value realization within a period of 6 to 9 months.”

Chemical plants can increase their productivity through smart manufacturing techniques such as process control, predictive asset management, product simulations, and connected worker solutions focusing on the empowerment of operations & creating a paperless shop floor.

Brabo lets you model your entire manufacturing site on a Digital Asset Family Framework to visualize asset utilization & critical asset KPIs. It also performs real-time anomaly detection. It has preconfigured chemical manufacturing asset templates for common equipment such as reactors.

However, enhancing the productivity and efficiency of the plant, comes at a cost as companies need to invest in technologically advanced infrastructure to support their operations, manage huge datasets and provide real-time data for analytics.

Its GUI is based on a no-code platform, making it easy for even the non-technical members of the plant to create site models & asset dashboards to run the operations seamlessly.

 

Brabo, The Edge Platform For Your Chemical Plants

Being an open architecture platform, it provides businesses with the flexibility to purchase the hardware and software solutions specifically suited to their business, saving them from making unnecessary investments into middleware, ESBs, historians, gateways, SCADA systems, etc.

Using the open architecture platforms, the chemical sector can bank upon the opportunity of digital transformation for accelerated growth, without having to incur additional costs. Brabo Edge Platform®, a Manufacturing Connectivity & Intelligence platform is one such solution that the industry needs to empower its operations and to create a foundation for digital manufacturing transformation.

Take your chemical business various notches up in terms of increased efficiency and reliability delivering business benefits from bottom to top, by integrating the latest Edge solutions, Brabo!

The product is built on Modern Microservices architecture to offer comprehensive OT-IT data integrations aimed towards realizing faster time-to-value for Chemical 4.0 use cases. As the essential data is stored and processed on the edge, real-time data can be fed back to the equipment and machines to develop real-time closed-loop systems.

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Unblocking the commercial barriers for Industry 4.0 adoption in Chemical Manufacturing

“Industry 4.0 revolution brings unmatched opportunities for the Chemical industry to dramatically reduce the cost of production, increase business agility, embrace the vision of an integrated supply chain, and more. The digital transformation of manufacturing operations is rapidly becoming mainstream, with its direct impact on a company’s bottom line and competitive positioning.”

However, the economics of Smart Manufacturing technologies is complex and forbidding for the majority of the industry. A typical technology footprint needed to enable Digital Manufacturing involves investments into middleware technologies, integration technologies, historians (time-series databases), gateways, SCADA systems, Industrial IoT (IIoT) platforms, analytical platforms, hyperscalers, development environments, etc.

Most of these technology components are metered based on data volumes and the number of integration points – so the more the number of machines/data sources you connect, the more you pay.

At the same time, typical cloud-based IIoT platforms are metered on storage-based, per-month pricing models, making scalability over the long term a challenge. The entry barriers for small or less-profitable sites are tall and prohibitory – be it for an SME or the smaller units of a larger Chemical enterprise. The enterprise struggles equally to justify the business case over a 5-year term (or longer), with the annual spending spiralling up every year and business benefits dipping for even the largest and the most profitable sites.

“Hence the need for a technologically advanced solution that could digitize manufacturing operations with a more straightforward, flexible, and scalable business & commercial model is imminent. “

Brabo is one such state-of-the-art solution for the digital manufacturing needs of the industry. The open standards and microservices architecture-based software is a platform of platforms meticulously engineered by the in-house team of maverick technologists at Solulever, a European Digital Manufacturing Software Platform company.

Brabo is a Manufacturing Connectivity & Intelligence platform that lets chemical manufacturers embrace digitization across all their manufacturing sites, irrespective of size, the current state of technology, investment appetite, OEM landscape, or digital maturity of the respective sites. It cuts the layers of technology components otherwise needed to build digital and automation use cases.

The Digital Manufacturing platform provides a plug-and-play possibility to Connect (any data source), Contextualize (production data over any business parameter), Analyze (assets/processes in real-time or post facto), React (to events, alarms & drive automation), and Historize (data for audits & historical reporting).

The platform’s microservices architecture lets an enterprise build digital roadmaps differently for distinct manufacturing sites based on the scale and speed best suited to them.

“Brabo comes bundled with a highly intuitive and configurable ‘Asset Studio’ and ‘Process Studio’ suite of configurable use-cases.”

In a matter of a few days, these applications/analytics can be configured for an enterprise to deliver business value in asset utilization, material efficiency, quality management, process improvement, and more.For enterprises wanting to build custom applications and analytics, the platform delivers an integrated development environment and unlimited APIs to export to other platforms/ environments. This futuristic Industry 4.0 platform uses no other third-party license component, thus containing the price and avoiding any unpleasant surprises in the future for its customers. Built on a Hybrid architecture (Edge and Cloud), Brabo is delivered in two models : (1) ‘Brabo Edge Platform’ (BEP), which is better suited for large and super-large Chemical enterprises, and (2) ‘Brabo Factory Cloud’ (BFC), better suited for medium and small scale Chemical enterprises.

The Edge variant (BEP) is capable of delivering real-time and closed-loop (automation) use cases at high volumes (performance tested for up to 1 Million data points per second ingestion) and high speed (less than 500 milliseconds closed loop). BEP can optionally be delivered as an Appliance (an engineered Edge Server hardware preloaded with BEP). Solulever offers the flexibility of choosing between ‘per-site per-month pricing and ‘per-site perpetual’ pricing options for BEP. There is no extra licensing based on the number of equipment/data sources connected, inbound/ outbound integration points, data volume/ speed, use cases, etc. The cloud variant (BFC) is delivered along with a lightweight edge gateway, which is used to transmit data between a manufacturing plant and a cloud. BFC is offered on a ‘per-machine per month’ pricing model, with entry requirements as low as ten machines. BFC lets you fully digitize your shop-floor operations in 2 to 6 weeks.

Being the most coveted solution for transforming your chemical manufacturing business, Brabo is the go-to product to make your enterprise steer through the competition and embrace the Industry 4.0 revolution.

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Industry 4.0 Springboard for Chemical Manufacturers

OVERVIEW –

The chemical industry has been a relative laggard in adopting the digital transformation agenda. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a driving force behind boosting this adoption compared to many other sectors. At the moment, we find a broad spectrum of maturity levels of Digital Transformation in the Chemical space, based on the size, market, and technology landscape of different enterprises. Discussions with chemical industry experts reveal the top limiting factors for the rapid adoption of digital technologies. Solulever, a Dutch technology startup, aims to eliminate these limitations for the chemical sector by providing a well-suited & innovative software platform called Brabo.

INDUSTRY CHALLENGES

The chemical industry is at an inflection point in utilizing digital and IIoT technologies to drive higher connectivity, efficiency, and competitive differentiation. In recent discussions with some of the executives of the chemical manufacturers, we figured out the main business benefits targeted and the top impediments they faced in adopting these technologies. The business challenges targeted towards the adoption of Industry 4.0 are multi-faceted. From complex supply chains to erratic demand patterns to sustainability and regulation pressures, there are several dimensions of business challenges that the fourth industrial revolution addresses.

Some of these include :

  1. With the current methods & technologies, there is generally a lack of end-to-end visibility and transparency of the operations on the shop floor. With the traditional siloed operations model, it is uncommon to find an interconnected view of manufacturing processes in totality. This limits the ability of a manufacturer to drive holistic optimization or improvement initiatives.
  2. One of the significant drawbacks is the low operational performance resulting from the underutilization of assets. The data produced by the shop-floor equipment is voluminous. However, it is generally not used effectively to identify actual run times, time spent in breakdowns, and repairs. Digitization of the assets helps increase overall productivity by identifying these gaps in the operations, helping eliminate them, and maximizing the utilization.
  3.  It is generally observed that the potential of quality-linked optimization is underutilized. Manufacturers lose the opportunity for quality-linked cost-optimization since there is a disconnect between quality measurement, quality improvement, and material insight systems.
  4.  The aging workforce and the need to capture their tacit knowledge is more important now than ever before. At the same time, the digitally-savvy next generation of operators expects digitally advanced knowledge and operation systems. However, with a disconnect in the tech landscape, operators are introduced to many systems for different operation parts. It leads to an ever-rising learning curve and thus considerable resistance from the workforce to the frequent changes in their use of technology.
  5.  The majority of companies still operate on paper-based systems. The accuracy of the data captured in these systems has always been a question. This limits the ability of manufacturing executives to make informed decisions and drive improvements. Further, the traditional ways of scheduling maintenance on the shop floor restrict manufacturers’ ability to transition to predictive and prescriptive maintenance models.

SOLUTION

So far, the digitization of manufacturing operations needed to overcome these pressing industry challenges has been a complex affair. Multiple layers of the technologies are required to connect shop-floor and IT systems, create meaningful insights, stream the insights at speed, and make the needed business impact. Solulever has taken upon itself the challenge to simplify this somewhat complex, long-winded, and expensive affair.

Its newest development, called Brabo, manufacturing connectivity & intelligence software platform, is a single-stop solution that is fast being adopted by the leading Chemical Manufacturing enterprises. Brabo is one of the most comprehensive, flexible, and scalable platforms carefully architected to make manufacturing operations digitizing simple, fast, affordable, and fun!

Recently, the company delivered the edge variant of Brabo, called Brabo Edge Platform, to a prominent chemical manufacturing enterprise in Europe. Without needing expensive middleware or unique interfaces, this holistic platform is integrated into all the customer’s technology layers, including PLCs, DCSs, MES applications, ERP, and other IT systems.Brabo can read and interpret data coming from the shop-floor equipment of varying make and age with its multi-protocol support. Brabo now acts as an integrated system of manufacturing intelligence that the customer is using in the direction of Asset Utilization, Material Efficiency, Process Control, and OT Service Management. Brabo’s real-time data streaming capabilities bring real-time actions for operators to take corrective and preventive measures during manufacturing operations.As an added benefit, Brabo provides a drag-and-drop canvas for its customer to build, configure and visualize an advanced SCADA system – replacing the need for a third-party SCADA system. Brabo also comes bundled with its implementation of Historian, with a historian-to-historian replication functionality.Therefore Brabo acts as a single source of production data for all of the production reporting and dashboarding needs of the customer. With the ability to ingest up to 1 million data points per second, Brabo is at ease to handle the large data volumes in the large plant implementation for the customer. Starting with the Asset Utilization and OT Service Management use-cases, Solulever is working with the customer in bringing tangible business benefits in short sprints.

 

 

The platform is built 100% on microservices and open integration architecture. The benefit of GUI-driven low-code development is that creating new use-cases is a straightforward and fast process. The following 12-months roadmap includes use cases in Process Control, Material Efficient, and Quality Improvement.

KEY TAKEAWAY

The benefits of Digital Manufacturing for the Chemical industry are multi-faced in the direction of reducing manufacturing costs, improvement of asset utilization, quality improvement, operator enablement, and sustainability. Wide-scale adoption of this critical chapter of Industry 4.0 has been limited because of the associated solutions’ cost, complexity, inflexibility, and non-scalability. With the new wave of comprehensive, open-integration, and modern architecture-based software platforms, the situation is changing. Leaders in the chemical industry are fast adopting Brabo, a revolutionary platform for manufacturing connectivity & intelligence. Brabo is purpose-built to make the Digitization of Manufacturing operations simple, fast, affordable, and fun. Particularly for the Chemical Industry, Brabo is architected to deal with the various tech landscapes encountered. It is built to handle the large volumes expected & speed needed and is comprehensive to impact all relevant production KPIs. Also, it is flexible to be adopted across the enterprise and is scalable to justify the ROI irrespective of a plant’s size & profitability.

For more on Brabo, please reach info@solulever.com

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ABI Research features Solulever in its latest report on Digital Transformation

ABI Research, a global technology intelligence firm delivering actionable research and strategic guidance to technology leaders, innovators, and decision-makers around the world features Solulever in their Digital Transformation for Chemical Markets Report

Schiphol-Rijik | August 10, 2022 –

Solulever, a Dutch technology company, is delighted to be featured in ABI Research’s latest report. The former is a software platform company that focuses on enabling and simplifying digital transformations at manufacturing plants. ABI Research is a global technology intelligence company that analyzes and researches deep transformative technologies to guide business leaders in making optimized technology investments.

ABI Research recently published its report on Digital Transformation in the Chemical Markets. The report chronologically lists down 24 technological companies that operate in the domain of smart manufacturing globally. The vendor profiles will be helpful for the readers to perform competitor analysis and identify opportunities for potential partnerships. The report also provides a market forecast broken down into technology verticals and regions that can be used for the benefit of organizations that develop and sell solutions to digitize manufacturing units. ABI Research’s recent report helps organizations and readers identify potential barriers and drivers of investment for chemical companies.

Jitesh Kohli, CEO of Solulever, mentions, “It is a proud moment for Solulever to be listed in ABI Research’s report. Brabo (our manufacturing connectivity & intelligence platform) is successfully commoditizing the Digital Manufacturing transformation programs and is unleashing unlimited possibilities towards efficient, sustainable and visible manufacturing. I would like to thank ABI Research for their recognition of our work in the Chemical manufacturing space.”

Additional Resources –

https://www.cioinsiderindia.com/news/abi-research-features-solulever-in-its-latest-report-on-digital-transformation-nwid-4299.html

About ABI Report –

The ABI Research’s report ”Digital Transformation in the Chemical Markets,” by analysts James Prestwood, Ryan Martin (Research Director) and Michael Larner (Principle Analyst), was published on June 1st, 2022.

About ABI Research –

ABI Research is a global technology intelligence firm delivering actionable research and strategic guidance to technology leaders, innovators, and decision-makers around the world. Their research focuses on the transformative technologies that are dramatically reshaping industries, economies, and workforces today.

About Solulever –

Solulever delivers unique manufacturing intelligence platforms and industry-specific solutions that make the Digital Transformation of manufacturing operations simple, affordable, adoptable and fast. Headquartered in The Netherlands, the company is located in the Schiphol-Rijk area, amidst a vibrant presence of progressive & pioneering technology companies. With a fully-owned subsidiary in India, it leverages the powerhouse of technology talent the region has to offer. Solulever is part of Taurus Group, a $200m European leader in cutting-edge storage and compute infrastructure space, including high-performance compute, open compute and edge compute domains.

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