Future-Forward Analytics Platform Optimizes Multinational Chemical Manufacturing

Company Overview

Advanced risk management is paramount in chemical manufacturing – an inherently risky business. One of the planet’s top chemical makers – a publicly traded giant whose more than 50,000 employees span over 160 countries – continually evolves manufacturing processes while prioritizing safety across its 300 plants.

This formulator’s enterprise architecture team sought to leverage operational insights from the masses of streaming data generated by its production facilities. BlueGranite worked in partnership with the team to deliver a robust modern data platform to usher in enterprise-wide digital transformation. The data and analytics solution is speeding safety and efficiency insights while slashing downtime.

The Challenge

Safety in manufacturing is paramount and – in the chemical industry – complex. In the recent past, monitoring of the many processes essential to secure operations was a colossal task: continual supply chain oversight of potentially volatile materials, careful monitoring and rapid maintenance of production equipment, and keeping tabs of everyone on site.

Rapid advancements in tech, when thoughtfully applied, can give chemical companies the capability to harness and leverage such data at scale – key to minimizing operational hazards. Further, an expert-led analytics strategy can help formulators stay ahead of emerging market competition in a global economy, contend with unpredictable resource access and pricing, keep on top of industry regulations, and deliver shareholder value – all mission-critical to driving progress.

The Solution

Our build integrates on-premises IoT technology that collects manufacturing equipment sensor data, and third-party warehousing, into an Azure stack – selected for its hyperscale data ingestion, processing, storage, and analytical capabilities. Our design uses:

Azure Data Factory to simplify integration, speed transformation, and copy data to a data warehouse on Azure Synapse Analytics.

Event Hubs to stream real-time events to Azure Data Lake Storage where, along with raw JSON files, it’s captured.

Event Hubs also feeds Stream Analytics, as does the data warehouse.

Stream Analytics loads to data to Azure Synapse Analytics for downstream analytics and reporting.

This comprehensive toolset enables advanced functionality without additional significant infrastructure. It delivers a solid foundation to continue innovating and transforming business.

The Results

BlueGranite built a comprehensive, data-driven Azure-based platform that enables chemical plant managers to quickly capture the state of their individual plants and, in the event of an emergency, understand who is in the building at any given time; key to safe, productive manufacturing. The platform gives the global chemical formulator tools to reduce manufacturing-line downtime when changing products, during employee shifts, or in the event of equipment failure. Big-picture insights and individual plant performance views can highlight high-production plant characteristics, while also illuminating areas of concern. The cloud-based Azure stack delivers rapid and cost-effective scalability.

The AI-enabled platform also empowers the enterprise’s data scientists with access to model information housed in the data lake. Data science use cases here range from production forecasting to risk modeling, all now feasible. Azure enables the organization the ability to quickly and cost effectively scale its solution.

Looking to improve visibility into your production line while gaining rich efficiency insights? BlueGranite can help. Check out our eBook to learn more about how modern data lake deployments enable business critical capabilities. Ready to take the next step? Contact us today.