Yara talks about the Digital Data Platform at FHI

Inspiring words and wise lessons from leading company Yara

Production Process Automation Event

After a day full of inspiration, it's time for a fantastic closing event at the FHI Production Process Automation Event. We invited a special guest for this: Perry Jaspers from pioneering company Yara. He talks about the Digital Production Platform, in which retrieved process data is available for data analysis. 

Yara is the largest producer of fertilizers and AdBlue in the Netherlands and Europe. The company converts energy, natural minerals and nitrogen into a range of crop nutrition products and industrial applications. Technical process owner Perry Jaspers tells more about it. 

Predictive maintenance

While Perry introduces himself to the audience, he immediately lets us know that Yara believes in common sense: that goes a long way. He then explains what Yara's maintenance process looks like, with the new pillar: predictable maintenance. “We recently got a complete one best practices for preventive maintenance and how to carry it out.” 

So many companies, so many definitions. Therefore, Perry explains his definition of predictive maintenance out. For Yara it consists of three levels: 

• condition monitoring; 
• predictive maintenance; 
• prescriptive maintenance. 

A dive into the Digital Data Platform (DDP)

Perry then goes into depth. He talks about collecting data in a cloud environment and why this works for Yara, despite risks such as cyber attacks. He shows how they tested the DDP model and what lessons they learned from it. Now it's time for the next step: creating value from the data. While Perry shares interesting facts, visitors take a photo of each slide. 

A realistic look

With predictive maintenance you cannot expect the algorithms to tell you exactly what to do. “It's not a crystal ball. What is the value of predictive maintenance: it tells you which assets you don't need to pay attention to. This way, the technicians know which assets they should focus on.” Other pitfalls and expectations are also encountered. For example, Perry says that you have to accept that sometimes things go wrong. “You have to learn before something is successful. Ultimately, there will be a reduction in unexpected problems.” 

Perry concludes with an image of a turn signal. “The most important thing is to all move in the same direction and communicate clearly about that.” Wise lessons from Yara. 

Curious about the rest of the Production Process Automation Event?  

read here more.