In the 20th century, the challenge for an industry that, let's say, manufactured yogurt, was to make its product well. In the 21st century, smooth, creamy yogurt is no longer enough to survive or succeed. In this new hyperconnected world, a yogurt maker can only maintain a competitive advantage if it is able to make faster and more accurate decisions than the competition, if it manages to adapt better to the (fast-paced) changes in the market and demand.
Without leaving the previous example, today, a yogurt manufacturer will need to know in real time what the quality of all the batches being produced is without having to wait for the end of production to check if one was in poor condition. Nor will it force equipment maintenance because it has to, but only when necessary. This will reduce quality and maintenance costs and increase the company's competitiveness.
Behind decisions like these, there is nothing other than well-managed data. All processes of any industrial activity continuously generate data, which, if not rescued and processed, can lead to the loss of very valuable information and, therefore, money. Only by “treating” its data well, can an industrial company improve its operations, by better knowing how its machines work, and can adapt to production needs, focusing on maintenance improvements, quality or production controls, or better x-ray the costs.
“Treating data well” is nothing more than “collecting the data from all the machines and processes, cleaning it, homogenizing it and we are ready to, through analytics, make efficient and safe decisions,” explains Jaume Rey, CEO of Nexiona, from its DFactory headquarters, in the Free Trade Zone of Barcelona. “It's like doing plumbing with data; A plumber ensures that the water that reaches the tap is of quality and is available when required and we ensure that all data sources are available for consumption and are of quality.”
How is this data plumbing process carried out? The first thing, to extract them, "either we locate the most basic computer that every machine has - called PLC - and that will give us the information of some process that it carries out, or we sensorize points of things with the Internet of Things (IoT). production from which we can obtain relevant data,” explains Rey. After “talking to the machine”, the data is ordered, since without this order, this data is of no use, “now that there is so much talk about artificial intelligence, without all this previous process and without quality data there is no “AI worth it.”
Thanks to the MIIMETIQ software, developed by the company itself, all the data obtained is homogenized and applications for different uses are developed. “Our clients can install it in their company and manage it themselves, it can be developed by a partner of ours who is an expert in that software, or we can manage it ourselves.”
This flexibility of offering each client what they need is, according to Rey, one of Nexiona's strengths. Just as in guaranteeing the sovereignty and privacy of the data to its clients, who feel safer without having to transfer all that valuable information to third parties, "by being able to install our platform in their own plant or in a private cloud, and then decide what features to add and when. Instead of acquiring a platform for each task (quality control, maintenance, production control, energy control, etc...), now the client has all their data together and from that 'data lake' their own applications are created according to their needs. ”.
They are not the only ones doing this, but they have survived 12 years competing against large multinationals “because we found our niche: that power of the customer over their own data and the privacy of our platform. Since 2022 we have offered an industry 4.0 digital maturity audit service with the help of the inventors of this concept in Germany and to this we add the creation of roadmaps that define the path to follow according to the strategy and objectives of each client, or “We will accompany you throughout the entire process of managing your data.”
Among its clients, this company has large and medium-sized companies in very different fields, from the pharmaceutical sector (Grifols) to perfumery (Puig) or beverages (Damm) and food (Elaborados Naturales) and are especially relevant in the steel industry (Celsa, Collected Tubes). In Damm, for example, Nexiona is monitoring the quality of the beer from the moment it leaves the factory until it is consumed in the bars. In Celsa's plants in Norway, it has managed to increase energy efficiency thanks to data control and has also created production traceability solutions.
“It hasn't been easy to get here, the first eight years people were still not aware of the importance of data or understood what we were doing; Now, luckily, the market has matured.” In the last eight years, this company, which Rey makes clear is not a startup because “we do not want to sell it tomorrow, but rather be the European leader in IoT and data management in industry 4.0”, has grown exponentially, almost doubling its turnover every year. year (2022 was closed with almost 3 million).
Something that has undoubtedly helped them in this spectacular growth, says Rey, was, without a doubt, installing their offices in the industry 4.0 cluster of the Barcelona Free Trade Zone Consortium. “Here everyone has a value proposition and, therefore, in addition to sharing innovation, being here allows you to find partners to reach new customers. Not to mention the good image you give when a potential client comes to see you and their face lights up when they see that we work in this nerve center of industry 4.0.”
“The idea is that here not only will companies get to know each other that they didn't know before, but they will work on joint projects,” explains Pere Navarro, State delegate to the Consorci. With these synergies “the aim is to change the Spanish industrial fabric, support companies during their digitalization process and turn Barcelona into the center of 4.0 innovation in southern Europe”
DFactory already hosts around 30 key companies in sectors such as 3D printing, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, machine learning, IoT and robotics. Precisely, last September, the cluster was awarded the Best Business Initiative Award from Executives Magazine, which recognizes the synergies that are created between companies and professionals who meet in the project building to develop their innovation ideas. .
