SUCCESS STORY
Wienerberger: Scalable data visibility for optimized production
Lukas Pechhacker
Represented in 28 countries with a total of over 200 production sites, Wienerberger is a leading international supplier of building materials and infrastructure solutions (bricks, pipe systems, pavers). More than 3200 production lines provide valuable data, processed by an industrial data management system, leading to optimised production:
- Saving energy and raw materials
- Reduction of production line downtime
- MES integration
All relevant data online at any time
We at HEAP Engineering offer a scalable connectivity solution between heterogeneous industrial equipment and the cloud by using edge industrial PCs (IPCs). At the edge between the production plant and the cloud, production data is pre-processed in order to ensure that only relevant data is company-wide available.
The company-wide data visibility created in this way provides insights into the production processes allowing collaborative teams to contribute to their optimisation.
Optimal production based on data
Digital twins, virtual representatives of the production, can be created from the shop floor data in order to ultimately achieve optimised productivity. The first digital twin was already implemented in 2020 at the Wienerberger plant in Haparanda (Sweden). Since then, another 200 production lines followed until finally all Wienerberger production sites are to be connected in 2024.
Combining the gained production data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, optimisation of production is to be advanced in the future.