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June 22, 2023

The Celanese transformation to Digital Plant of the Future

Celanese, a global specialty materials and chemical company, wants to remove the impediments that stand in the way of its people doing their best work—for the company and themselves. It’s well on the way to achieving that goal with its implementation of a “Digital Plant of the Future” vision powered by Cognite Data Fusion® on Microsoft Azure. Manufacturing employees can now spend less time identifying problems and more time solving them.

Celanese

“We are well advanced in our cloud strategy, so running Cognite Data Fusion® on Microsoft Azure fit seamlessly into our strategy.”

Andy Penton, Vice President, Manufacturing IT, Celanese

When Ibrahim Al-Syed quotes Abraham Lincoln’s line about “of the people, by the people, for the people,” he’s not referring—as Lincoln did—to the government. Instead, he’s describing a remarkable “human-centered digital transformation” at his company, global chemicals and engineered materials manufacturer Celanese. It’s a transformation that’s laying the foundation for the company’s manufacturing future while helping employees to be more engaged, productive, and satisfied with their jobs.

The digital transformation for the Celanese manufacturing organization was sparked by the same concerns that keep executives up late at night: the company’s volume of data was growing faster than its ability to use it—or even keep track of it. Data could be tough to find, locked away in silos, or employees could find several inconsistent sets of data that first had to be reconciled before they could be used. 

“It took more time to pull all the data from different sources than it took to analyze it,” recalls Brendan Buckbee, Manufacturing Production Manager at Celanese. 

“We’re now putting the right data into the hands of our experts, so they can spend less time identifying problems and more time finding solutions.”

Amy VanBerschot, Unit Leader, Celanese

Thinking big

Al-Syed, Director of Digital Manufacturing at Celanese, and his colleagues weren’t looking for a point solution to their concerns. They were looking to build a Digital Plant of the Future, a foundation on which they could quickly and cost-effectively develop any solution they needed, whenever they needed it. The data environment had to be consistent, reliable, and predictable. It had to reduce costs and risks and optimize manufacturing processes and assets. It also had to have as positive an impact on Celanese’s employees as it did on the company’s KPIs. And it had to support uses as varied as the manufacturing floor, field service, and Celanese business goals.

That’s a tall order to fill, but Celanese filled it with Cognite Data Fusion® on Microsoft Azure. The solution from Microsoft partner Cognite is an open Industrial DataOps software as a service (SaaS) platform that consolidates operational, information, and engineering technology data into a single repository. It uses AI algorithms to automatically create contextualized data models that abstract away source system complexity. That, in turn, enables engineers and other experts to quickly and reliably build new dashboards, production solutions, and digital twins—and to scale these across other assets. 

To help accomplish these goals, Cognite Data Fusion® draws heavily on Azure: Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is core to Cognite’s infrastructure; Azure Functions orchestrates complex calculations; Azure Data Lake stores data held in Cognite Data Fusion®; and AI capabilities in Azure and Azure Machine Learning extract knowledge from documents to provide context to pictures and video streams. With access to this rich, contextualized industrial data, AI & Analytics services on Cognite and Azure Stack drive even faster business value.

“We are well advanced in our cloud strategy, so running Cognite Data Fusion® on Microsoft Azure fit seamlessly into our strategy,” says Andy Penton, Vice President, Manufacturing IT, at Celanese.

Putting the human in “human-centered transformation”

Celanese was determined to not let its people get lost among all the new technology. To achieve the “human-centered” part of its transformation, the company, as Al-Syed puts it, “chose to build solutions around personas, rather than around processes or technologies.” In practice, this means that Celanese has envisioned roles such as “Maintenance Technician of the Future” and “Operator of the Future” and created solutions to make those roles real. For example, instead of making the rounds of various machines, operators can click on machines in a digital twin model and see their real-time status and all the work notifications tied to them—and then proceed directly to the machines needing their attention.

“We’re now putting the right data into the hands of our experts so they can spend less time identifying problems and more time finding solutions,” says Amy VanBerschot, Unit Leader at Celanese.

Celanese began its adoption of Cognite Data Fusion® on Azure with a three-month pilot at a single operating unit within a single plant. Based on the initial success, it deployed the solution at five units over the course of six months. It’s now in the midst of deploying the solution fully to units at its manufacturing facilities worldwide. 

“We were impressed with the flexibility to bring Cognite Data Fusion® on Azure to our facilities where and when we wanted, at our own pace,” says Al-Syed.

Achieving first-year goals  

Celanese finds that Cognite Data Fusion® on Azure has achieved measurable ROI in the first year, with additional value expected as the deployment rolls out further. 

A Forrester study finds that for a composite organization with 30 industrial facilities, 25,000 employees, and $2 billion in annual revenue, the solution can result in a 14-month payback and 400 percent three-year ROI, with $21.6 million in net benefits over that time. The savings and cost avoidance comes from optimizing heavy machinery and industrial processes ($9 million), boosting energy efficiency ($5.1 million), losing less time to shutdowns ($4.8 million), achieving greater SME efficiency ($1.5 million), and other sources.

“We want to enable our people to work at their maximum potential,” says Al-Syed. “To do that, we have to improve work experiences by unifying people, data, process, and systems with a common platform—Cognite Data Fusion®, minimize time on non-value-added activities such as automating transactional work, use robots and, lastly, empower people with the right skills for the right job.”

This is a part of Celanese’s broader goal for its future. “We envision a Digital Plant that is predictable, efficient, and self-optimizing to make safe, reliable, and quality products across the globe,” says Al-Syed. 

“We were impressed with the flexibility to bring Cognite Data Fusion® on Azure to our facilities where and when we wanted, at our own pace.”

Ibrahim Al-Syed, Director, Digital Manufacturing, Celanese

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