Harnessing the power of IoT to optimize plant production

Client

FLSmidth

Website

www.flsmidth.com

Industry

Industry & Manufacturing

Service Line

End-to-end product development

Overview

With 135 years of experience, FLSmidth is a leading supplier of production facilities, equipment and service solutions to the cement and mining industries. Headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark and with a presence in over 50 countries, the company has a rich history of proven products and expert knowledge in the entire lifecycle of production within cement and mining. Now FLSmidth is speeding up its digital efforts and is the industry’s IoT leader.

✓ Designed and developed SiteConnect™, an app for managers at sites with equipment from FLSmidth

✓ Worked closely with FLSmidth from initial design to app implementation and roll-out

✓ App helps customers avoid unscheduled downtime and increase plant productivity

The idea

Production facilities contain thousands of sensors for monitoring and automation. These sensors, in turn, generate massive amounts of data. FLSmidth is exploring ways of using this data to optimize production, avoid downtime, increase quality and deliver sustainable solutions. The company’s vision is to deliver these data-driven benefits to its customers, in the form of digital applications. Using these apps, customers can gain real-time insight into plant and equipment health and performance. FLSmidth wanted an innovative, experienced digital partner to help them realize this vision. They turned to Star for our unique design capabilities and design thinking methodology.

Project

The Star design and engineering teams began by conducting a one-week discovery workshop to ideate on digital product design and performed a technical feasibility study. Based on the input gathered, they developed the first clickable prototype of the future application. The teams then went on to build an MVP version of the SiteConnect application that, after just three months of work, was initially presented at Bauma 2019, the world’s leading trade fair for the building industry, held in Munich in April 2019.

The event and MVP presentation were a success, and the production-ready version of the application was launched in August 2019.
SiteConnect connects to an IoT-platform in real-time and displays hundreds of parameters relevant to plant production and maintenance. Customers can monitor and control their plant remotely, using the app, or they can leave the monitoring and optimization to an FLSmidth service center. Based on the data provided, customers can also predict when it is time for equipment maintenance, thus avoiding unscheduled downtime and increasing plant productivity through proactive maintenance.

Testimonials

“With Star, we experienced a strong partner for the entire roll-out. They were present at the first design thinking workshops with us. They had people on the ground interviewing our customers and they designed and programmed the app. Their work was on time and within budget.”

Ole Knudsen
Head of Digital Products, FLSmidth

“We were aligned all the way through, and we were working fast in this project. This fits nicely with how we normally develop software. The documentation by Star during the development is great and makes it easy for us to follow up on the digital effort.”

Bodil Recke
Director of Digital R&D, FLSmidth