The “process break”, an error or halt in production flow, is a major problem that the automated manufacturing industry faces today. This is because each process break event costs enterprises up to hundreds of thousands of euros in wasted resources. The manufacturing industry is thus undergoing dramatic digitalisation and automation to collect vast amounts of manufacturing process data across hundreds of conditions and variables. These data contain all of the information needed to optimise processes, reduce downtime and minimise waste. However, no methods currently exist to process and interpret all of this information in real-time. Effective in operando break prevention for complex manufacturing industries (e.g. paper, steel, pharma, chemical) is thus impossible. These manufacturing industries are consequently currently limited adopters of AI-based control systems, because today they cannot see clear economic advantages from an investment into today’s process break prevention solutions. A solution, which could provide effective and efficient break prediction, prevention and process control to afford manufacturers noticeable savings, is thus needed.
The fundamentally new mathematical model behind our innovation, Pythia, and its easy integration, make it universal to any machine and factory (e.g. paper, steel, chemical, pharma). Nevertheless, to build a proof-of-concept system we started with the process-break-prone paper producing industry. The overall objectives of the Pythia project, to reproducible guarantee effective break prevention with 90% justification accuracy, 30 minutes ahead of time, have been determined to be: 1) development of features for Pythia usability (i.e. data connectors, integration, user interface and application platform); 2) core Pythia technology development and optimisation (i.e. counteracting, automatic model adaption and missing and faulty data detection); 3) external validation of Pythia with pilot partners in paper and steel manufacturing; and 4) effective deployment and execution of our commercialisation, communication and dissemination strategies.
