Industry 5.0: how digital insights lead energy transformation

Even as the global economy heads towards a soft landing, concerns over disruption and fragmentation remain dominant business themes this year. Renewed geopolitical tensions are affecting supply routes, while mounting fragmentation is influencing both trade and climate issues.

Three technologies transforming threats into opportunities

Three transformative engines can help turn these challenges into opportunities. Businesses across the industrial spectrum are turning to digital twins, industrial artificial intelligence (AI), and ecosystem-wide industrial intelligence to build competitive advantages. Companies that invest in cutting-edge digital technologies today will begin to pull away from the rest of the pack.

Conversely, those who don’t, run the risk of being left behind. Most recently, companies that amplified investments in cloud, AI, and other technologies during the pandemic were growing revenue at five times the rate of late adopters beginning their digital journey just a year later, according to Accenture.

In this challenging new business environment, digitalisation can help achieve profi t targets while also supporting positive outcomes for people and the planet. Taking a cue from nature, success lies in an ecosystem-first approach to data and insight. Built around the integrated digital twin and overlaid with AI, a connected industrial ecosystem delivers tangible benefits to all members of the value network.

By bringing together data from across the industrial lifecycle, these trusted applications drive meaningful insights and efficiency. With the cloud enabling the viewing of this integrated data in context and from anywhere, teams can collaborate and operate from a common reference point. This gives them the confidence to make decisions quickly.

This common reference point relies on the use of a digital twin. Defined as a virtual representation of a physical asset or process, it serves as the single source of truth for authorised stakeholders at every step of the product or process lifecycle. It can be used to forecast potential maintenance issues, find ways to use fewer resources, and can even address the skills shortage through virtual training, optimised workflows, and remote maintenance.

Bringing industrial and generative AI technologies to this golden digital data thread strengthens these capabilities. Indeed, this combination supports optioneering, predicts maintenance, and optimises operations in real time. Taken to its logical conclusion, the result is a perpetual state of iterative improvement arising from the use of automated processes.

Extending these benefits to the entire value chain  - internally, such as across a company’s distributed geographical network, or externally, including partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders – builds a set of continuous feedback loops that spark ingenuity at every level. Seeded by data and backed by generative AI, these connected intelligent networks can be the key force-multiplier in advancing the development of Industry 5.0 and, consequently, fostering a more sustainable global environment.

Three ways digital insight is delivering for profit and planet

Industrial players are already seeing significant results from the use of these technologies. SCG Chemicals in Thailand, one of the country’s largest petrochemical companies, gains real-time, end-to-end visibility into engineering, operations, and maintenance processes with a virtual three-dimensional plant and immersive, touch-based visualisation tools. Through better understanding and tracking of data and KPIs, teams can find the information they need in less than 10 seconds. Plant reliability rose to nearly 100%, and the company achieved nine times its return on investment in just six months.

Syscom has worked with Dubai Municipality to design and set up a system for overseeing hundreds of remote sites. By offering predictive data, analysis, and monitoring and control capabilities, the solution has boosted productivity and effi ciency by 21%. Notably, the heightened visibility has enabled Dubai Municipality to achieve daily savings of $2 million through water reuse initiatives.

RHI Magnesita relies on performance data to carry out predictive maintenance for its customers’ high temperature industrial furnaces around the world. A global connected-machines architecture enables the refractory materials supplier to predict refractory consumption for up to six months with an accuracy of more than 80%. It shares these benefi ts with its client network, advising on when to repair units and reorder new materials, increasing coordination and efficiency for both client and supplier, while reducing energy, downtime, and waste.

Industrial intelligence to thrive amid disruption and fragmentation

These are just a few ways that industrial businesses are now making the most of digital insights to deliver for profit, people, and the planet. AVEVA research shows that 84% of companies are making decisions with incomplete data. Yet, almost as many – 78% – know that enabling data sharing drives the highest value.

That’s why we expect to see more industries adopt digital twin and AI solutions in order to start to actively blend digital insights with knowledge and experience from human, environmental, and social sources. Combining data analytics, AI, and human creativity unlocks the industrial intelligence needed to thrive amid the threats of constant disruption and fragmentation, and with it, to create new sustainable opportunities for the future.