Predict industrial pump failures and reduce energy consumption

The competition launched in 2018 CSEM Digital Journey is intended to support Swiss SMEs in their digitisation projects in order to increase their competitiveness on the international market.

This year, one prize went to Digitel SA, based in Cugy (VD), and a second to the national sugar and salt producers Swiss Sugar and Swiss Salt Works, who were joint candidates. The two winners will be able to draw on the entire wealth of expertise and technology at CSEM and will receive individual technological support worth CHF 100,000 each, according to CSEM.

AI for the detection of weak points in industrial pumps

Schweizer Zucker employs around 250 people at its plants in Frauenfeld and Aarberg, who process around 10 000 tonnes of sugar beet per plant per day during the harvest season. Schweizer Salinen extracts, stores and distributes up to 600,000 tonnes of salt a year and ensures the supply of salt to the whole of Switzerland with its three salt works in Schweizerhalle, Riburg and Bex.

With the help of CSEM, the two SMEs now want to tackle a common challenge: using artificial intelligence to predict failures in their industrial pumps, which circulate different types of liquids - Swiss sugar, for example, has more than 150 pumps on a total of 50 kilometres of pipeline. Currently, the condition of the pumps is not proactively checked, which prevents early detection of defects. Weak points are therefore only detected late, which can lead to costly failures. With a predictive analysis, defects could be detected early, processes optimized and energy saved.

Reduce energy consumption of refrigeration systems

Founded in 1989, Digitel SA specializes in the development and marketing of solutions for the regulation and remote control of refrigeration systems for the food wholesale, hotel and industrial sectors. Such installations are very energy-intensive. In Switzerland, industry, supermarkets and service companies alone consume around 11,000 GWh of electricity, which is equivalent to one seventh of Switzerland's total electricity consumption.

Aware that this is the case, Digitel has already developed an initial solution to detect excessive power consumption. Together with CSEM, the company now wants to use artificial intelligence to bring a comprehensive energy efficiency solution to market. The aim is to provide end users with a tool that continuously measures the energy consumption of a plant fleet, detects and reports anomalies and their causes, so that the energy balance can be optimized.

This solution could very soon be applied to the Digitel plants already in use, achieving energy savings of between 5 and 10%.

"For many Swiss SMEs, digitalisation is a key differentiator in the area of customer services. As the two winners of our competition show, it can also help to reduce costs, for example by reducing technical downtime and optimising energy consumption," explains Alexandre Pauchard, the CEO of CSEM. The CSEM Digital Journey competition is aimed at companies with fewer than 250 employees, whose financial and human resources are often insufficient to meet the challenges of digitization.

Source: CSEM

More about the winners in the video