Koch’s journey toward ‘plant of the future’ began with vision

In May 2018, leaders of Koch Ag & Energy Solutions (KAES) began working on a roadmap that would lead Koch to the "plant of the future." At that time, Koch's leadership committed to the vision of this transformation.

According to Elton, the plant of the future will be fully optimized, including capacity, cost and safety systems.

"Through the rapid adoption of proven tools and methods, KAES operations [would] transform how it operates to increase production, decrease risk, and elevate the working experience and opportunities of our employees," said Howard Elton, process control and automation leader of Koch Industries. "Our journey to the plant of the future is about leveraging automation to become fully optimized in terms of safety, capacity and cost. It means being fully connected with realtime plant information fully available, 24/7, everywhere and for all stakeholders. And it means fully integrating with all data systems working seamlessly together to achieve the optimum [result]."

This vision captured how Koch chose to think about not only the future and how it wanted to get there, but how it would focus on the economic drivers that moved the company forward and supported the financial commitment of the roadmap.

Speaking during the YNow2020 virtual conference, Elton accentuated how the digital transformation journey can be realized.

"It can deliver tangible outcomes, and it can truly make work and life easier and more straightforward," he said. "It can also work across all areas of your company, from product sales, delivery and manufacturing to engineering and project execution."

The fun part

To arrive at the roadmap, Elton said Koch focused on its biggest problems and greatest areas of discomfort.

"It doesn't need to be complicated, and it doesn't need to be perfect. It's a journey, not an event," he explained. "What seem to be the most often-recurring issues or problems at your plants? Is it moving product to the customer or delivering improvements to the business with engineering?" Elton asked. "Get clarity around the problems you want to solve. Decide what is most meaningful and most achievable for your business, markets and -- most importantly -- process technologies."

Elton explained that, for some companies and businesses, this might mean the "dark" plant or the fully autonomous one.

"That may be a far reach for some, but for most others, it's not that futuristic," he said. "There will be some incremental improvements along with some step-change improvements brought about by the application of new digital technologies. Once you've decided on the direction and the broad goals, choosing the technologies and how to apply them to get there is the fun part."

Elton added that companies should also expect some "bumps and bruises" as their digital transformation journey progresses.

"Get ready to experiment on a small scale with things that bring the greatest risk to your organization," he said. "I recommend you only include a few of those at a time."

Many companies will only need to apply the tried-and-true technologies that, although they may not be new to a company's specific industry, may be new to that individual company.

"There are many voices in the market touting the shiny, new object, but digital transformation is truly a journey that requires deep focus on data, infrastructure, people and how data is consumed," Elton concluded. "This is the foundation I've been speaking of. This delivers robust situational awareness. With situational awareness, the transition into decision support and increasingly autonomous execution is possible."

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