A Data-Driven Industrial Marketplace Pushes Plant Optimization

Through a mobile app, users can monitor that amount of water consumed, spotting problem areas to reduce consumption.ZiraTempo, which operates 10 production lines for alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, used Zira to reduce the amount of water its plant consumes. Tempo chose 60 measurement points around the plant to detect leaks, optimize water purification systems, and check plant consumption compared with similar plants around the world. Fixing just three instances of problem areas found—conductivity settings, a burned sensor on a pasteurizer, and optimized operation of a reverse osmosis system—saved 17% of total water usage without affecting production, product quality, or factory personnel.

“The biggest benefit, especially for food and beverage, is the ability to manage a digital transformation phase in the company from end to end,” Farkash says. “Defining the process, adding people, going through the mapping process, the resources they have, data point, processes, and actually running a full system.”

The Zira platform focuses on members first (people and machines) to create tighter and faster engagement cycles. The Zira feed, a real-time collaboration engine, combines with the Zira marketplace, a platform that allows industrial buyers and suppliers to interact, bid, and buy. By using data accumulated over extended periods of time, Zira helps manufacturers maximize existing resources and systems and recommends the best investments to optimize operations.

Zira is all about the collaboration and communication, Farkash explains. It combines structured data coming from the facility and its machines with unstructured data like pictures, texts, comments, and even “likes.” In fact, it looks very much like a social network feed, he adds. “People can interact with data coming from the machines in a way that’s very familiar,” he says. “They might not know all their systems, but they’ll quickly understand that.”