Artificial intelligence and connected devices harness stream of data to keep production moving, reduce costs
By Jennifer Smith July 15, 2019 12:00 pm ET Consumer-goods giant Unilever PLC is building virtual versions of its factories, using data streaming from sensor-equipped machines to create digital models that can track physical conditions and enable testing of operational changes.
The approach is part of the growing use of the enormous streams of data that flow from the Internet of Things, devices embedded in objects including factory equipment that send out information on how the equipment is operating. Such technology is gaining traction in industrial operations from high-tech and pharmaceutical manufacturing to oil fields and refineries as companies look to improve operations by using tools such as predictive maintenance to get to machine parts before they wear out.
Unilever and Microsoft set up a pilot last year at a facility in Valinhos, Brazil, that makes products including Dove soap and ice cream. It took three or four weeks to create a full digital twin, which the company used to set parameters for standards such as the temperature at which soap is pushed out before being cut into bars.The project has saved Unilever about $2.8 million at that site, the company said, by cutting down on energy use and driving a 1% to 3% increase in productivity.
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