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A Data-Driven Industrial Marketplace Pushes Plant Optimization

Zira has taken a different approach to data analytics, showing food and beverage producers how to better recognize opportunities and prioritize actions.

Zira Platform
Zira

Because there’s often a lower level of automation in the industry, food and beverage producers can have a more difficult time than some other industries getting useful data, according to Elhay Farkash, co-founder and CEO of Zira, a startup taking a somewhat different approach to data analytics. “They have less data about quality and a lot of reliance on unstructured data. Visual assessment with a picture or video makes it harder to build a structure with logic,” he says. “Zira provides a very unique solution for that.”

>>See how food and beverage producers are turning to new technologies to better optimize production in an increasingly complex industry. Read “Balancing Production Optimization in a Changing World.”

Launched recently from stealth by the team behind Lightapp, Zira uses data to manage plants more effectively from the ground up. The company calls its technology a data-driven industrial marketplace, and it combines data from people, machines, and processes, and creates a collaboration hub for that information. With global food and beverage producers among its customers—Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Bimba Bakeries, to name a few—Zira is helping manufacturers glean insights from data on the plant floor to better recognize opportunity and prioritize actions.

Pepsi’s water meter is connected directly to the Zira platform.Pepsi’s water meter is connected directly to the Zira platform.ZiraAs one example, Pepsi began as a Lightapp customer, starting with one plant in Fresno, Calif., on a large-scale energy management project focused on compressed air systems. Since then, Pepsi has extended its reach across more people in the plant, into more systems, and across other plants, including Frito-Lay facilities. Pepsi has now optimized its compressed air systems by almost 40%, translating into significant energy savings.

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