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White Paper #1: Obtenez les clés pour vous guider vers l’Industrie 4.0

Posted on:10 February 2023

The decarbonization of the industry appears today as a major challenge, both for economic, geopolitical, and environmental reasons. Energy renovation, use of renewable energies… what actions should be implemented to achieve this? How can industrial players get support today?
To assist you in this transition, we have written the Dametis White Paper, in 3 chapters, so that you get the keys to guide you towards Industry 4.0!

The drafting of this White Paper was made possible thanks to Dametis experts.

Julian Aristizabal
Co-founder, CEO

Jérémy Barrais
Product Manager

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Nicolas Duran
Co-founder CTO

Sébastien Papouin
Technical Director

Cyril Quemeneur
Energy Engineer

> Chapter 1 – Data and human expertise at the heart of your decarbonization strategy

I. Environmental memory and intelligence (vs energy memory and intelligence)

II. Environmental expertise in a software (vs expert brains…)

III. 4.0 Data artisans of environmental data (vs energy data)

> Chapter 2 – A collaborative environmental optimization platform: a must-have for your transition

I. Maintaining performance in the long term

II. A low or zero carbon global project

III. Impact on ESG reporting (Environmental, Social, Governance criteria)

> Chapter 3 – Managing energy: some concrete cases to know where to start!

Chapter 1: Moving towards Industry 4.0 – data and human expertise at the heart of your decarbonization strategy

I. Memory and environmental intelligence

If “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race” (Stephen Hawking, 2014), intelligent software, on the other hand, can mark the end of energy waste in the industry. For example, energy data involved in the production of a product – from mascara to cars to puree sachets – far exceed the storage and processing capabilities of the human brain.

• Energy memory already outsourced

Naturally, professionals started by outsourcing their “energy memory” to paper files and Excel spreadsheets. This is the case when an operator reads the meters on a printed form and files it in a binder, before eventually a colleague copies, with more or less errors, this data onto a computer. The same phenomenon of outsourced storage occurs when various software programs doze off in a corner of the factory, keeping all kinds of data, especially energy-related, without doing anything with it.

• The limitations of Excel spreadsheets

Julian Aristizabal, CEO of Dametis: “Today, many industrial sites manage their energy with simple Excel spreadsheets. This involves time-consuming and risky work of data retrieval – during factory tours, which in the absence of automated transmission can represent 30 minutes to an hour per day – and then integration, a lot of copy-pasting, rewriting errors, a stack of versions created by different users… This method takes away valuable time to reflect on this data (which is incomplete and unreliable compared to what would be provided by a good EMS).”

• Humans and A.I. together tackling the ecological challenge

A software measuring environmental performance is therefore (among other things) a new memory of the factory. When this software is sufficiently advanced, the data it contains is correct, well-organized, easy to access, contextualized, and non-redundant. The particularity is that this memory can be mobilized simultaneously by two categories of brains: human and algorithmic. If one must worry that in general, in our societies, “the computer comes to represent an ideal in the light of which real thinking ends up appearing deficient in a perverse way” (Matthew B. Crawford), it is nevertheless necessary to recognize that the human mind cannot alone meet the challenge of energy savings in the industry.

• Environmental orchestration software in the factory of the future

Already essential in current factories aiming for the “achievable energy minimum” (AEM), software will gain importance as production sites become increasingly automated.

“Programmable machine tools, welding and painting robots, guided carts, handling and assembly robots have long been part of the factory and storage warehouse,” recalls Charles-Édouard Bouée in his book Confucius and the robots (pub. Grasset, 2014). But the new generation of these equipments will bear no resemblance to the previous ones, as they will acquire more and more intelligence and, thanks to the Internet, they will be able to connect and communicate with each other.

In Industry 4.0, environmental performance software will be the conductors of the ecological challenge in this “new cyber-physical reality.”

• Humans remain essential

Julian Aristizabal, CEO of Dametis:
“The software is based on a man-machine collaboration. Because in a factory, we always end up facing exceptional situations that require human intervention. Software does not create expertise, it operates based on human expertise written in algorithmic form. There are also things it cannot do, such as (re)calibrating sensors – which inevitably drift over time, meaning the zero point shifts and the data reported is incorrect.”

II. Environmental expertise in a software

• Expert systems serving industrial companies

A collaborative environmental transition platform should ideally concentrate, in the hands of each user, the global human expertise in industrial environmental efficiency. To achieve this, it must be a true expert system.
“An expert system is an artificial intelligence (AI) computer tool designed to simulate the know-how of a specialist in a specific and well-defined field, by exploiting a certain number of knowledge explicitly provided by domain experts.”

Challenge factories against the best global performance

In addition, the expertise provided must be rich enough to integrate the best environmental scores (energy-related among others) worldwide, updated, across all industries.
The EMS software can thus challenge utilities and processes by comparing them to the best global performances. Of course, there is no pre-packaged benchmark that can simply be “poured” into the software… This data must come from accumulated field experience (factory visits and audits, implementation and monitoring of measurement plans…) from the company providing the software, supplemented by specialized documentary research.

• EMS users can enhance their energy skills

By nature, an expert software transfers to industrial companies an enhanced knowledge traditionally held by employees, service providers, and consultants. However, there is no risk of energy skills loss internally, as the software is not a “black box” from which strange recommendations and assessments would emanate, but rather a transparent and intuitive tool at the service of humans.
In general, “software must enable user autonomy – especially in France where we observe a fairly strong technical maturity, with highly qualified operators – by being flexible and open.” (Julian Aristizabal, CEO of Dametis).

Dametis’ expert system is defined by a dual transfer of expertise: on one hand (and by definition), a process of concentrating the knowledge of our experts within the platform, and on the other hand, a process of disseminating this knowledge to all users (especially on-site operators).
Our users, who are involved in the use of the software, continuously increase their level of skills and gain autonomy in the field of environmental performance.

III. 4.0 Environmental Data Craftsmen

A software must first collect, second by second, a large amount of data, wherever they may be: PLCs, ERP, MES, sensors, virtual sensors with algorithms…

And just like a carpenter studies his wood before working on it – is it sturdy, irregular, knotty…? – a software must “understand” its material (the data) before doing anything with it. Is the data erroneous (sensor drift, parameter error…) or correct?

• Reflecting the life of the factory and eliminating “technical debts”

“I have visited factories where the software data was so disconnected from reality that the tool had become unusable,” notes Julian Aristizabal, CEO of Dametis. These technical debts affect, to varying degrees, 90% of the software I encounter.

What some software designers forget is that industrial companies spend their time looking for solutions to real problems, and therefore modifying their facilities. A software must reflect reality and take into account even the smallest changes which, when added up over months, shape the factory.”

• Examples of daily changes to consider

The software must constantly maintain a critical eye on the data while also eliminating “technical debts” by assimilating daily changes (feeding a process, configuring a utility…).

A tap to interconnect two cold networks will change the performance of both networks, an automation specialist can easily change an addressing to optimize communication between two PLCs. An intelligent software must be able to follow these evolutions.

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