The BLUE BOX for IoT analytics wins Industry 4.0 award

The certificate honours outstanding achievements in information and communication technologies. At this year’s awards 19 finalists from a range of industrial and commercial businesses competed for the honours in four categories.

Each finalist has been scrutinised by a panel of industry experts. The judging panel explained Sulzer’s nomination: “The innovative integration of IoT (Internet of Things) into an existing productive environment and, thus, the optimal use of IoT convinced the jury. An existing value chain has been equipped with IoT solutions and offers a high customer added value. The selected combination of technical, procedural and people quality is a shining example of a high maturity in the development process based on the chosen MVP (minimum viable product) approach up to the marketable product.”

The BLUE BOX by Sulzer is a set of smart software services leveraging the Internet of Things for asset optimisation and real-time predictive maintenance. Using Sulzer’s Advanced Analytics Engine, BLUE BOX encompasses the capabilities of data capture, integration, visualisation and big data analytics tied together for the explicit purpose of improving the reliability, efficiency and performance of physical assets.

BLUE BOX also includes the concepts of condition monitoring, predictive forecasting and real-time actionable insights through remote process transparency. All data analysis components including data modelling, real-time predictive analytics and machine learning are performed in the Sulzer secure cloud platform. Further, this cloud-based solution simplifies regulatory compliance with a minimal IT footprint and was designed to be easily scalable.

In the oil and gas industry for example, operators face three main challenges:

Reliability: Case studies revealed annual unplanned outage costs of up to USD 40 million. BLUE BOX strives for cutting these costs by 25%.

Efficiency: Large pipeline Operators can pay annual energy bills of USD 50 million to more than USD 100 million. The ambition of BLUE BOX is to save 5% – recurring every year.

Performance: Operators want to best leverage existing assets. As needed, BLUE BOX helps to free up throughput worth another $10m annually for a typical pipeline company assuming a 5% capacity increase at an annual revenue of $200m.

Marc Heggemann, Head of Group Commercial Digital Solutions, said: “What makes BLUE BOX unique is its minimal digital footprint and secure connection to process data that can be gathered without the need for additional hardware. Combined with our expertise in pump manufacturing and maintenance, this cutting-edge data analysis tool can deliver long-term improvements and cost reductions.”