From environmental to energy savings goals
Baby food of the brand Blédina, belonging to Danone, are prepared in the factory in Brive-la-Gaillarde. Since 2012 this industrial site gave a go to an extensive environmental program, which includes decreasing of water consumption, support of sustainable agriculture, and especially reduction of their energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
In order to realize this ambitious plan, the factory adopted a digital solution of METRON in 2016. This solution includes a digital platform, which can be connected to any source of external or internal data. As a result all energy flows are monitored and managed in real-time with regard to their specific context.
For the site at Brive-la-Gaillarde, a large part of captors was already in place and rest was added by the engineers of METRON. “We are saving a lot of time on the monitoring of our consumption. Also, we have succeeded to completely eliminate paper and achieved more efficiency and time for preparation”, concluded Sébastien Boissier, director of the manufacturing systems at Danone.
Solution with proven results
Advanced data analysis, help of the artificial intelligence and realization of recommendations of METRON helped Blédina to realize 3,7% of energy savings in the first year of collaboration. This amount grew to 4,4% in 2017 and 5% in 2018 - an equivalent of 150 000 EUR. And more savings are on their way.
“We strongly believe we can do even better. METRON offers artificial intelligence models which we have never exploited before” added the manager of industrial IT at Blédina.
The recommendations of the METRON engineers, based on advanced real-time data analysis, also allowed to improve certain operations, such as pasteurization, water use and cleaning. The results are so encouraging that Danone proceeded to deploy this digital solution on other plants in France and the world.
Approach which works in any factory
The solution of METRON can be used for any industrial plant, no matter the current level of digitalisation, number of captors in place or geographic location. Another example from the food processing sector outside of Europe (client does not wish to be mentioned) shows 10% of energy savings, which equal to 60 000 USD a year.
Do you have questions about METRON or would like to discuss how our solution could help to save energy in your factory?
The original article in French was published in the printed version of L’Usine Nouvelle and written by Aurélie Barbaux, text of the second case study was added by METRON.
