Achieving High Performance With Manufacturing Execution Systems: How IT Can Help Plants to Become Best In Class -- Full Text

In recent years, information technology (IT) has brought a range of improvements to the way companies are run. Systems today support everything from better decision making to greater efficiency in processes, from the back office to the customer-facing front line. But in manufacturing, these optimizations have not yet fully reached plant operations.

That is not to say that sophisticated technology has not found its way to the plant floor—it has. But often, systems differ from operation to operation. Many are internally designed custom applications that are difficult to upgrade and maintain. In many cases, systems do not provide the full range of functionality needed in today’s manufacturing environments. What’s more, plant systems often are not integrated with each other, or with company enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. As a result, manufacturers find it difficult to keep data up to date and synchronized across operations. Plant managers lack the detailed, timely information and the tools needed to guide day-today operations—not to mention improvement programs such as Total Productive Maintenance™ and Six Sigma™. And ERP-based information used by upper management often does not reflect the realities found on the shop floor.

It is Accenture’s point of view that evolving technology is making those gaps unnecessary. Companies can move their plants forward with sophisticated sets of tools such as historians, batch managers, reporting applications, dashboards, scheduling systems and integration software, known collectively as manufacturing execution systems (MES). With MES, companies can weave together plant systems, integrate them with ERPs, give plant operators and management better information about schedules and shop-floor processes, and make better use of automated information flows.

To get started, executives need to know what today’s MES suites offer, and the business case for implementing these technologies. Executives should question if their plants’ current manufacturing IT landscape properly leverages today’s technology capabilities in order to provide the sites the required tools to become best in class.

Understanding how modern, mature MES solutions fit into companies helps bring greater efficiency, speed and precision to manufacturing, meeting customers’ needs more cost-effectively and accurately, and positioning themselves for high performance over the long term.

Assessing the benefits

The value of having accurate, timely information to support manufacturing may be self-evident. However, getting a more precise view of the business case for MES is not always so simple. Benefits can be difficult to measure: For example, if inventory costs go down, is it due to the better insight into material consumption provided by MES or reduced ordering levels from a key customer? Or, metrics such as overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) may actually appear to be lower than expected as a result of the MES’s automated collection of data, because operators are no longer able to “interpret” figures to their advantage. Faced with this complexity, many companies have skipped the formal evaluation phase after implementing MES and therefore cannot provide evidence of the improvements brought by MES.

Fortunately, the business case for MES has been put into clearer focus by a study conducted by the Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association International (MESA) industry group and the Industry Directions Inc. analyst firm.1 This study, which encompassed 150 manufacturers, found that there is a clear relationship between the use of MES and improvements in business results. In a number of areas, such as on-time delivery, manufacturing cycle times and labor and inventory costs, companies using MES were significantly more likely than those not using MES to report annual increases in performance.

In addition, Accenture experience has shown that MES can bring benefits in terms of improved management of IT. The traditional approach, with its disparate, nonintegrated technologies found across the plant, can lead to hidden IT costs that plant managers may not recognize. Such systems can also increase security and backup risks, because they are beyond the reach of the standards and methods of the central IT department. In essence, then, industrial processes—the manufacturer’s core business—may be dependent on systems that are vulnerable and not rigorously managed, and an outage could bring production to a standstill.

With MES, on the other hand, the manufacturing IT landscape becomes much easier to manage. Increased reliance on standard, integrated solutions means that IT departments have fewer types of technologies to support. Economies of scale can be brought to bear in both the purchase and maintenance of systems. And better monitoring and centralized control over IT makes it easier to ensure that effective security and businesscontinuity processes are in place.

Functionality of today’s MES suites

The first step toward achieving those benefits is to understand the functionality offered by today’s MES suites. While companies often grasp the importance of MES as a software layer integrating ERP and shop-floor systems, many are less familiar with the range of functionality MES provides— functionality that can help manufacturers increase efficiency and productivity.

MES suites are not a single “black box,” but rather an array of tools and technologies. Solutions differ, of course, but Accenture has created a general, high-level, supplier-independent model illustrating the functional modules that manufacturers can expect to find in a typical MES implementation.

Plant model. This model provides centralized storage for production data, such as information about processes, products, equipment, materials, personnel and related parameters. If appropriate, the plant model can be linked with other systems to enable actions such as the automatic synchronization of the BOM (bill of materials) in the company’s ERP system. This central data storage reduces the need to track and coordinate data in various systems. It also supports the Right First Time manufacturing principle: consistent, centralized master data leads to less rework and waste, which indirectly results in shorter throughput time and fewer complaints.

Detailed production scheduling and simulation. Typically, the ERP system sends a master production schedule to the production sites, but this is not detailed enough to be used for finite schedules on the shop floor. For example, such schedules often do not account for factors such as machine changeovers, cleaning, optimum sequencing and equipment constraints. As a result, many local schedulers have developed their own spreadsheet-based scheduling applications, an approach that is errorprone and limited. Detailed productionscheduling modules of MES vendors provide the functionality needed to go beyond that basic approach. They typically enable companies to use graphical representations such as Gantt charts to develop and compare several plans to find the optimum schedule; to schedule with a focus on specific KPIs such as inventory costs or throughput times; to quickly adjust actual schedules in the event of disruptions or rush orders; and to understand the relationship between the production schedule and the distribution schedule. Implementing such a system can help shorten throughput times, increase efficiency and lower inventory costs. It may also lead to less-tangible advantages, such as quality improvements driven by reductions in stress among shop floor employees.

Product definition management and production execution management. To do their jobs, operators on the shop floor need detailed instructions, such as product specifications, images of the product to be produced, information about customer-specific concerns related to the order, product-specific safety instructions, and so on. Many companies have traditionally managed this information using paper forms, bulletin boards and folders. MES solutions, on the other hand, provide such information to operators electronically, in real time. This enables them to quickly scan materials and, for example, determine whether they have the correct lot for the order and whether the lot has been released by quality control. Often, MES systems can automatically send product-specific parameters to machines and devices, reducing the need for manual intervention and reducing errors and time in the process. Such functionality helps avoid waste and rework, which indirectly shortens throughput time, helps reduce recalls and increases customer satisfaction.

Mobile solutions, smart devices, wireless. Often, operators and mechanics move around in production facilities to read data from sensors and take samples, and record that information on paper forms. But today, smart devices and wireless technologies make it possible to automatically read sensors and detect problems such as gas leaks from a distance, reducing humans’ exposure to hazardous situations. In situations where actual inspections are still necessary, mobile solutions, such as smart phones and Wi-Fi-enabled tablets, can provide instructions for operators and mechanics about the sequence in which they have to collect data and when to take which kinds of samples from specific tanks. The data they collect can be input into the mobile device and instantly made available to a central control room and laboratories. Analyses of the data can be used to quickly develop adjustments to the appropriate process settings, which in turn can be immediately provided to the MES screen in the operator room. The use of such mobile solutions can help reduce safety risks while providing real-time insight into processes, allowing production to respond quickly when changes are required.

Historian. Historians are “flat” databases that can archive huge amounts of data for a very long time. For example, a historian might keep a log of the temperature of an oven or the pressure of a reactor, with readings taken every second. With the historian, the process engineer can access enormous amounts of data in the form of automatically generated trend charts and Pareto diagrams. Current process results can be easily compared to those of, say, last week or even last year. Thus, historians are key to process optimization and can have a positive impact on quality and throughput. Although most industrial enterprises have historian databases in use, many are not yet using one at every location where it is appropriate. In addition, there often are important areas for improvement with existing historians. For example, older systems often lack sound reporting capabilities, so the data is left hidden in local silos. And in many cases, there are several different historians in place, which is a disadvantage from a systemsmaintenance point of view.

Dashboard. As in other areas of business, people working on the shop floor can benefit from business-intelligence functionality. However, to be effective in a production setting, such systems need to provide information in real time and at a high level of detail. Operators simply do not have time to scroll through various screens and examine different fields to find information; they have to concentrate on the physical process. Thus, it is essential to provide plant personnel the exact data that they need in a timely, user-friendly fashion. That is the role of the plant dashboard—providing the appropriate information in the appropriate format at the appropriate time to the appropriate users. Dashboards can provide real-time information, often collected through interfaces with SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) or DCS (distributed control systems) solutions. This information is presented in different views to different audiences using a single data source. For example, operators may need to see the actual OEE of the line they are working on, while plant managers might need an overview of the OEE of all the production areas. With the dashboard’s real-time insight into the status of production orders, disruptions, quality issues, and so forth, companies can be in position to respond to events before they become serious issues—helping to bring down the cost of quality and increase efficiency.

Reports and genealogy. MES suites provide standard reports about shifts, batches, quality, OEE, etc. A key advantage is that all reports stem from the same source—a combination of automatically collected data from programmable logic controllers (PLCs), SCADA and DCS, and information manually entered into the MES during the production process by operators. As a result, the company is working with a “single version of the truth.” Data can be fed automatically into the ERP system, helping upper management feel confident that it is working with valid information, and enabling decision makers across the organization to focus on improving performance, rather than rechecking data. An MES also opens the door to using standard report formats for all the plants in a network to support benchmarking efforts. And compared to an ERP system, it can provide far more detailed tracking and tracing to strengthen regulatory compliance efforts.

Workflow management. Workflow management functionality is relatively new in MES suites, but it can be an effective tool for coordinating processes involving several departments and several systems. For example, when a production department has produced a batch, quality control has to inspect that batch. Once that is done, the logistics department can prepare the material for distribution. The longer it takes for departments to inform each other about the completion of their task, the longer the throughput time will be. Workflow management can shorten the lag time of handoffs, which in turn can have a significant impact in terms of shortening lead times. In addition, the system’s “forcing” of employees to execute specific steps can help improve quality and compliance.

B2MML interface. The integration of plant floor systems and ERP systems is a fundamental aspect of MES, and critical to providing real-time insight and enhancing collaboration between departments. To that end, MES suites provide standard interfaces called B2MML (Business to Manufacturing MarkUp Language). These enable supplier-independent messages, based on the ISA-95 standard for Enterprise- Control System Integration. Commonly used interfaces enable the sending of master schedules from ERP systems to the MES, the synchronization of the BOM between ERP and MES, and the sharing of performance and qualityrelated data, such as actual material consumption. Because of this “vertical integration,” the accuracy of the data in the ERP system improves, which potentially leads to lower safety stocks and improved customer service.

Cross-site MES. MES solutions on the market have become mature, and it is now possible to develop a core model that can be deployed in a standard way on all sites. Another interesting possibility is to use existing MES solutions as agents to improve visibility of performance of the plants in the supply chain and to lay a basis for benchmarking of the plants in a business unit.

Industry perspectives on MES

With this range of functionality, MES suites can be applied in different ways at different companies. To understand these various potential uses, it is helpful to explore hypothetical examples from various industries.

Mining
The biggest challenge for mining companies is to meet high demand by increasing ore throughput while maintaining quality. Thus, measuring downtime and identifying its causes are important contributions that MES suites can make in the industry.

The planning functionality of MES is important for mining industries because the upstream production processes have to be synchronized with the arrival of ship transportation in ports. If this is not done accurately, ships may be left waiting, which can result in high demurrage fees. In the port, trucks and trains need to be discharged, ore stacked or blended, and material ultimately loaded onto ships. MES solutions help to synchronize and account for the time, energy and equipment required in each of these operations.

Meanwhile, a different type of MES solution is needed to support processes in the production chain. In the orebeneficiation phase, for example, MES can focus on data collection and reporting. Here, data from local PLC and SCADA systems is collected, archived in a historian database and used to report on efficiency, production stops, yield, quality, etc. This data provides a baseline for continuous improvement efforts. Because ore quality varies, these improvement programs have to pay special attention to the efficiency of the processing plants. For example, the grinding process can suddenly experience a decrease in performance due to a change in the quality of the ore. MES can detect changes in ore quality, track and record the activities and results of processing, and alert automated systems that a new control strategy should be deployed. This is much cheaper than the alternate approach of maintaining expensive stockpiles of material to blend into the mix to maintain quality.

An MES can also play a role in managing downtime. When connected to a PLC, an MES can detect start and stop times of the equipment and register the causes of problems, helping companies identify and mitigate problems and ultimately improve throughput.

Scheduling in mining is a complex task. Mine and port schedules need to be synchronized, but these are typically managed on separate systems, one specialized for mining and the other for port operations. Once ore is sold and a ship is hired, all mining operations (drilling, blasting, loading, hauling and dumping) need to be coordinated to feed the ore processing plant. Railway transportation needs to be planned (usually with yet another scheduling system) so that the ore is delivered to the port at the appropriate time. Optimizing these operations is very complex, but it typically provides large returns—and an MES can be key to the cross-system coordination of processes.

Finally, the mining industry often uses trucks to transport ore from pit to crusher. Various types of on-board systems monitor truck health, fuel consumption, payload, tire conditions, etc. The data from these systems must be collected and sent to a central MES system, and this requires effective communication networks. Connections have to be good in all kinds of weather, and telemetry infrastructure must be able to cope with geographical changes of the mine pit, routes and mobile fleet.

Steel
In the steel industry, the cost of production is a special point of concern. Often, steel customers are large global companies with strong buying power; on the other side of the equation, raw-material suppliers (in cases where the steel company does not have its own mining resources) are often in a strong negotiating position when it comes to pricing. Thus, costto- produce is a key area of focus.

Another concern is producing to specifications. This is particularly important in the rolling and finishing processes—areas where the real value for the customer is added, and where several quality issues may occur. But throughout the entire production process, operators and quality inspectors have to share information about process results and inspections, which are performed on every block of steel. There are also a number of interdependencies between processes, such as the need to have a cool bed available for semi-finished products that leave the hot-rolling process.

MES can help companies meet these challenges in several ways. MES can support real-time communication about process results between operators, quality inspectors and product engineers, which can help bring down cost-perunit and increase quality. MES can also collect data in real time and put it in a business context, enabling employees to address problems proactively. In the rolling and finishing processes, MES can provide finite scheduling functionality that takes into account all the complex interdependencies between processes and between semi-finished products that are split into parts but still have to be processed as a group (such as using the same oven).

Meanwhile, quality and other characteristics of the individual products have to be traced, and this can be done automatically using MES, reducing the need for paper forms. The information in MES is also an important input for the certificate of analysis, which can be made available quickly through automatic data collection and interfaces between information systems. MES solutions also provide programs for managing the slitting and cut-to-edge processes. And they can track the OEE of various lines, providing insight into opportunities to increase process uptime and product quality—which leads to lower cost, shorter delivery times, higher yield and satisfied customers.

Oil and gas
The challenges of oil and gas companies are different for the upstream (exploration and extraction), midstream (crude and gas distribution), downstream (refining, distribution to customers, marketing in retail stations) segments of the industry.

The use of MES functionality is particularly valuable for the downstream segment of the industry, where it can help deliver benefits in quality, energy consumption and costs. For example, production processes have to be optimized, and raw materials have to be divided as efficiently as possible across available storage tanks. Companies tend to deal with large raw material batches that have different characteristics, and these need to feed into production in such a way that the process remains as stable as possible. This helps limit variation in the quality of the finished product, and reduces the amount of out-of-spec products. MES functionality can be used to keep track of these requirements and achieve target yields more easily.

At terminals, meanwhile, products have to loaded on and off ships, trucks or trains. Intake, storage and transportation processes are controlled and monitored with DCS or PLC/SCADA solutions. But other activities that take place before and after these processes also need to be taken into account. For example, companies need to register the arrival and departure of trucks and ships, along with their weight and/or contents. They also need to record which products for which customers are stored in which tanks, the temperature and the pressure of tanks, which batches are fed into which process, and so on. All of this can be tracked with a specific type of MES, the TAS (terminal automation system). Such systems can result in significant savings in personnel costs, shorter throughput time and better insight in the availability of tanks and batches. In some cases, the TAS makes it possible to automate many of these processes.

For refineries, MES can provide scheduling functionality, along with dashboards for monitoring alarms, energy consumption, safety-related events, performance and carbon emissions. The information available in historians can be leveraged for analyses designed to drive ongoing optimization. And the APC (advanced process control) and simulation functionality of MES can help operators make better decisions, leading to improved quality. MES can also collect and archive equipment-status data to support predictive maintenance. And, by using automatic workflows, such systems can help companies standardize processes, reducing the dependence on individual employees. Ultimately, such MES features lead to lower personnel and energy costs, shorter throughput times, more on-spec products and better capacity usage.

Often, processes in the oil and gas industry are already highly automated, so it may seem that MES solutions are not relevant. Even when that is the case, however, MES can enable the horizontal integration of the value chain—something that is vital in an industry that often operates with departmental and site silos. Quite often, sophisticated automated systems are not integrated. This is largely because of a lack of common interfaces in a varied IT landscape. Here, the B2MML interfaces in MES provide a standardized way to link disparate systems.

Such integration can help companies synchronize downstream planning for refineries, terminals and retail operations with greater precision—and doing so can have a real business impact. In one case, Accenture found that a company was routinely pumping crude oil from a field to a distribution terminal 3,000 kilometers away, while a refinery close to the field was buying some of that crude and shipping it back for refining.

Pharmaceuticals
For pharmaceutical companies, the most fundamental challenge is getting drugs to market quickly and successfully. A patent for a drug is only valid for about 20 years, and research and development (R&D) takes approximately 12 years—so there is a finite window available for marketing products at higher margins, without having to compete. In addition, governments often want companies to provide lower-cost drugs, which puts pressure on margins. Thus, cost reduction is also critical.

MES can help pharmaceutical companies reduce the time needed for new product introduction. For example, a pharmaceutical company reduced timeto- market by 25 percent through the improved ability to extract data from MES historian modules, which enabled it to spend significantly less time on manual data collection.

MES can also help reduce the cost of manufacturing, while also speeding up production. Automatic data collection and monitoring of operations help reduce mistakes and alert operators to problems early on. The percentage of Right First Time production increases, leading to a shorter throughput time and less waste and cost of rework. The ability to avoid production errors that might cause the rejection of product batches is critical, because such a batch may have a market value of a few million dollars.

Meanwhile, the workflow functionality in MES can improve communication between different disciplines, such as production and the lab. This may help reduce waiting times, since operators and lab analysts are informed in real time about the status changes of batches (such as “ready for inspection” or “released”). Overall, Accenture has seen MES reduce the time needed to produce a product batch from as much as 240 days to as little as 90 days.

Pharmaceutical companies also put a significant amount of effort into regulatory compliance. The traditional approach of keeping paper batch records adds to that effort and increases the potential for errors. When there are problems with batch records, the investigation process can take days, which means that high-margin product ends up being kept off the market for some time—and an investigation can easily cost $100,000. When multiple sites are involved, paper records can be difficult to search and reconcile, and varying formats make it difficult to benchmark and share industry-leading practices across the company. MES allows companies to automate and streamline the tracking of this compliance information.

MES can help in other ways as well. It can enable companies to check in real time whether operators have the appropriate qualifications for the task they are performing, which is important for compliance. It also makes it easier to monitor the cleaning and status of equipment, and develop insights into the causes of downtime. And it can help companies track maintenance orders and instrument calibration more effectively.

Chemicals
Chemical companies face increasing global competition, the commoditization of many products and high material prices—all of which increase the pressure to differentiate themselves and keep costs down. They must also contend with a growing emphasis on environmental issues and the need to be “green.” And through it all, they face waves of impending retirements due to an aging workforce, and thus need to find ways to capture the process knowledge that resides largely in employees’ heads.

MES can help chemical companies meet these challenges in several ways. For example, better scheduling in factories can improve throughput time and reduce personnel and energy costs. (Often, if energy costs can be reduced by just 1 or 2 percent, that alone is enough of a business case to justify the implementation of the system.) In addition, the automatic collection of equipment start and stop times leads to more-accurate OEE information, which in turn can help improve equipment reliability and maintenance strategies—and avoid the all-too-common “overmaintaining” of equipment. And the automatic workflows of an MES help reduce errors and operator-training time—which is especially important for companies replacing large numbers of retiring employees.

Meanwhile, MES can provide real-time insight into the status of production orders. This information can be valuable not only to salespeople responding to customer questions, but also internally. For example, if there is a quality issue, operators can quickly review the product genealogy and see which batches were affected. For the longer term, the information in MES helps companies understand critical factors affecting quality, leading to more stable processes and reductions in quality costs. And MES can provide real-time status information to ERP systems via automated interfaces. This can lead to more-accurate inventory information in the ERP system, reducing the need for large safety stocks.

Food and beverages
Government regulations require food and beverages companies to implement detailed tracking and tracing systems to account for the raw materials and production history of products. This tracking can be quite complex, because various batches of some raw materials, such as grain or liquids, are often stored together. It is physically impossible to separate these mixed batches, and costprohibitive to store batches separately.

So, companies have used theoretical algorithms to track materials and carefully record when silos and containers are fully emptied and cleaned. Other industry concerns are hygiene, costs and seasonal effects on raw materials, which can require adjustments to parameters such as temperature and processing time.

Food and beverages companies also have to deal with the strong power of retailers. This is especially challenging when working with fresh products that expire quickly, requiring accuracy in delivering the exact ordered quantities—which can vary frequently based on factors such as weather and holidays.

MES can help achieve lower costs, higher yields, and more accurate tracking and tracing. These systems automatically register all process steps in real time, based on actual data, such as quantities (ERP systems, on the other hand, usually use back-flushing methods, and do not record actual consumption). MES suites also make it possible to generate batch records quickly, and access accurate information about batches that have been stored together.

MES also lets companies automatically compare the characteristics of raw materials to historical data, and to use that information to advise operators about needed adjustments to temperature, cooking time or other process parameters. These solutions help reduce rework by monitoring whether operators have selected the appropriate material lot, and whether the required equipment has been cleaned. In packaging, they can reduce lag times and human error by automatically sending order-specific settings to printers, labeling devices and other equipment. In the end, this range of improvements may lead to the avoidance of unnecessary energy consumption and to higher yield and throughput time.

Utilities
Various utilities face different challenges. Some are struggling with reliability issues or aging assets. Others are working to reduce energy loss, deliver power for electric cars, implement smart devices or explore ways to reduce their impact on the environment.

Different segments of the industry rely on different types of information systems. Typically, generation management systems (GMS) are used in energy generation, energy management systems (EMS) are used in transmission and distribution management systems (DMS) are used for the final distribution of the energy. GMS, EMS and DSM are essentially MES solutions for utilities.

With MES, basic SCADA functionality can be used to control and monitor processes in real time from a central location. MES systems can also be linked to surrounding solutions used by utilities, such as geographic information systems (GIS) and outage management systems (OMS). This linkage eliminates manual data exchange, leading to greater efficiency and improved real-time insight.

For electric utilities, balancing supply and demand is crucial, because it is not possible to store large amounts of energy at the transmission level. MES capabilities support this balancing process, which can be quite complex. Short-term forecasting and scheduling tools provide insight into the appropriate options for producing energy in the cheapest fashion, taking into account the units within the grid that may be unavailable due to maintenance.

The systems in the MES layer can provide insight into performance indicators such as energy import/export, energy production and energy consumption in real time. This can help utilities increase stability in the grid, and allows them to quickly reroute energy if necessary, thus reducing blackouts and congestion. To help decision makers cope with the complexity of these activities, systems can simulate work orders before actually executing them. As part of this process, historical data can be automatically fed into simulations from the historian. At another level, data can be collected from several source systems and fed into analytics processes to assess performance and identify improvement opportunities.

What’s next?
The question with MES solutions often is: where do we begin? The answer depends on the specific company’s situation and business challenges. Different MES solutions have different strengths, and beyond the technology itself, the way that MES solutions are implemented can have a significant impact on the business benefits that are ultimately achieved. Finding a way forward takes planning and careful decision making. But it is likely to be worthwhile, because today’s MES solutions have the potential to make manufacturing more efficient and responsive—and position manufacturers for high performance over the long term.

In a recent engagement, Accenture delivered a business case tool for process automation to the world’s largest bulk liquid storage provider. This tool allows the customer to make value-based decisions with regard to their terminal automation program. It does so by predicting the gains (expressed in process safety, efficiency, and effectiveness KPIs) from increasing the levels of automation of various parts of their operations. Automation in this case was defined as installing a DCS/SCADA system, a terminal automation system (purely administrative), or an integrated solution stretching from the ERP system down to the pumps and valves.

The tool uses a standard business process model for terminal operations and was customized for this company’s particular business needs. It is very flexible, allowing all of the company’s terminals to be evaluated no matter the size or scope of operations. Using this effective tool requires about five working days per terminal to validate all key numbers and deliver a management summary as well as a detailed analysis, even allowing discussions on the level of future shift patterns. The company already evaluated several operations and initial benefits are being evaluated. Depending on the current maturity level of the individual terminal it is expected that truck turnaround times may be reduced by up to 50 percent, man hours may be reduced by up to 60 percent, and safety may be improved significantly.

Contact

Chemicals: Bianca Scholten
bianca.scholten@accenture.com
+31 6 1335 0465

Food: Jean-Christophe Ledoux
jean.ledoux@accenture.com
+33 6 7171 5710

Oil and gas: Edwin Knoop
adwin.knoop@accenture.com
+31 6 1005 6648

Mining: Constantino Seixas
constantino.seixas@accenture.com
+55 31 9779 2140

Steel: Stephan Kotze
stephan.kotze@accenture.com
+27 82 551 2679

Pharmaceuticals: Bianca Scholten
bianca.scholten@accenture.com
+31 6 1335 0465

Utilities: Jörg Müller
joerg.mueller@accenture.com
+49 17 5576 7052