Customer Stories

In 2013, UC Davis as part of the University of California system had an ambitious goal: Net zero greenhouse gas emissions from the campus’s building and vehicle fleet by 2025. University of California, Davis was the first major university to pledge carbon neutrality, and with more than 1,000 buildings comprising a total of 11.3 million square feet, it’s a high bar to clear. In early steps toward carbon neutrality, the university embarked on a few large projects with clear benefits, retrofitting large plants and buildings to operate more efficiently. But when the obvious projects had been tackled, UC Davis turned to the PI System to identify opportunities for using data to drive more efficient use of resources.

Offshore drilling is a complex and dangerous process, and ensuring employee safety in the middle of the sea on a drill rig is a top priority. Operators driving the driller rely solely on a visual confirmation from ground crews while moving drill pipes. Between numerous personnel, heavy equipment, and 30-foot drill pipes, the drill rig is a dynamic environment that’s ripe for accidents. After a safety incident involving a drill pipe striking a crew member, a client reached out to Rolloos, an OSIsoft partner, for help. To enable its client to mitigate accidents and know where team members are at all times, Rolloos turned its CCTV technology into a comprehensive red zone detection system. By piloting OSIsoft’s Edge Data Store (EDS) technology, Rolloos ensured that all data was accessible by offshore operators for immediate decision support and could be streamed onshore for further retrospective analysis. Not only did this enable real-time monitoring of both people and heavy machinery, data is now used to optimize processes and improve overall performance.

CEMEX, the global building materials company, was sitting on a gold mine. Ten years ago, the company digitized operations, installing equipment sensors and PI System technology in every facility, creating an inbound stream of real-time data. With a decade’s worth of operational data, it was time for CEMEX to leverage that information to further advance its digital transformation. “Data is the new gold. We had a gold mine sitting there and we were not tapping it,” said Rodrigo Javier Quintero, operations digital technologies manager at CEMEX, during the PI World San Francisco 2019 conference. Taking a giant step towards autonomous manufacturing, CEMEX combined existing process knowledge with Petuum’s Industrial Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution, creating a springboard for predictive — and prescriptive — methods that would transform future operations. Thanks to Petuum and OSIsoft’s PI System, CEMEX is on the path to automating processes and achieving previously impossible production goals.