Bayer Increases Production Capacity in 10%

Whipped cream might sound like a delight, but that’s not the case when the material in a chemical reactor looks and acts like it. Bayer engineers at one of its Crop Science plants struggled with a sticky mass that resembled the popular dessert topping when it added starting material to one of its reactors. Instead of processing as it should, the material changed into a viscous phase.

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“When you have this effect, you can add the remaining amount of the starting material only very slowly and, at the end of the day, this reduces production output,” said Marita Beyer-Weitkus, Bayer’s plant manager in Dormagen, Germany. “Using a reporting system that checks overall equipment efficiency, it was possible to identify the process step where the delays occurred. Then, using TrendMiner, a deeper analysis of this process step was carried out, and the reason for the problem was found.”

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Their Digitalization Journey

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Like many chemical companies that chose to embrace Industry 4.0 technology during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bayer sought a way to democratize operational data to remote workers across the globe. The company launched TrendMiner as a pilot with specific use cases in mind at two of its sites. The trials were successful, and Bayer moved ahead with deployment.

So far, adoption has proven to be successful.

“We try to keep the threshold to start TrendMiner as low as possible,” said Bodo Güldenring, who is the TrendMiner Program Lead at Bayer. “We do that through a centrally sponsored program to minimize administrative work and index the data before the initial trainings start.”

Bayer deployed TrendMiner in an AWS cloud environment that collected local, regional, and centralized process data from various historians. Then, the company formed a team of its engineers, data scientists, and IT experts to develop a standard implementation process.

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Increasing Reactor Production

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• Until Bayer started using TrendMiner’s advanced industrial analytics software, its engineers could not identify why the vicious phase was occurring when starting material was added to the reactor.
• Using TrendMiner partner eschbach and its software, io.performance, Bayer’s operational experts learned the reason behind the anomaly. They then used TrendMiner for a deeper analysis into process behavior. This helped them identify the parameters that determined the material’s viscosity.
• Engineers then adjusted the parameters. By ensuring that the starting material would have a consistent flow and not get too thick to slow the process, they were able to increase production capacity by 10%.

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Benefits Achieved

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Bayer engineers have achieved many benefits using TrendMiner. Among them are:

• Quickly find the root cause of process anomalies
• Share knowledge about process behavior and solutions across sites
• Establish a cloud-based advanced industrial analytics solution that provided greater access to data
• Realize a 10% increase in production capacity
• Improve collaboration among process experts and central data teams

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“With the AWS IoT SiteWise and Amazon Timestream connector, we can easily analyze our time–series data with TrendMiner directly from our cloud storage. It is flexible to use for our different assets that store data in timeseries and helps us to analyze even more data and get a better picture of our production.”

Dierk John
Data Engineer at Bayer Pharma site in Weimar and Ben Schulze, Expert Digital Manufacturing of Bayer AG, Leverkusen

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Bayer Wins the TrendMiner Of the Year 2022 Award

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If you ask Bayer AG engineers about their digitalization journey, they will tell you it is gaining speed. Their commitment and dedication to improving their analytics maturity level has earned the life-science company the 2022 TrendMiner of the Year Award.

Bayer started its journey into process data analytics two years ago. The company did an extensive evaluation of solutions that could help them improve its operations. Bayer chose TrendMiner because of its unique selling proposition of putting software users first.

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About Bayer

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Founded in 1863, Bayer is one of the largest pharmaceutical and chemical companies in the world and has a diverse portfolio of products and services. Bayer operates in three main business segments:

• Pharmaceuticals: Bayer develops, manufactures, and markets prescription pharmaceuticals for various therapeutic areas. This includes cardiology, oncology, women’s health, hematology, and ophthalmology. Some well-known pharmaceutical brands from Bayer include Aspirin, Xarelto, and Yaz.
• Consumer Health: This segment focuses on over the counter (OTC) products, nutritional supplements, and other self-care solutions. Bayer offers a range of pain relievers, cold and flu remedies, skincare products, and vitamins. Brands in this segment include Aleve, Alka-Seltzer, and One-A-Day.
• Crop Science: Bayer is also a leading provider of crop protection products, seeds, and traits for sustainable agriculture. The company offers solutions for crop production, including herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, and genetically modified seeds.

With headquarters in Leverkusen, Germany, Bayer has a global presence and operates in more than 90 countries and has about 100,000 employees. It reached annual sales of 44 billion Euros in 2021, of which it spent 5.4 billion on research and development.

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