IIoT Solutions for Medium-sized Companies

Sam­son, head­quar­tered in Frank­furt am Main, Ger­many, and Infra­Serv Wies­baden are announced the begin­ning of a strate­gic coop­er­a­tion with the goal of fur­ther devel­op­ing dig­i­tal solu­tions to make the tran­si­tion to Indus­try 4.0 and the Indus­tri­al Inter­net of Things (IIoT). Sam­son is a sup­pli­er of prod­ucts and sys­tems to con­trol the flow of all kinds of media. For over 110 years, the com­pa­ny has been spe­cial­iz­ing in con­trol valve engi­neer­ing and is cur­rent­ly focus­ing on the inte­gra­tion of smart prod­ucts into Inter­net of Things (IoT) envi­ron­ments. Infra­Serv Wies­baden has been oper­at­ing and devel­op­ing Kalle-Albert Indus­tri­al Park since 1997. The park is home to 75 com­pa­nies and the sec­ond-largest indus­tri­al park in the Fed­er­al Ger­man state of Hesse.

The coop­er­a­tion between the two com­pa­nies is con­clud­ed for an unlim­it­ed peri­od of time. The key goal is to joint­ly advance an IIoT plat­form that dig­i­tal­ly sup­ports the opti­miza­tion of process­es and plant con­trol in medi­um-sized indus­tri­al com­pa­nies inside and out­side the indus­tri­al park.

UBIX and GES Sys­temhaus, two sub­sidiaries under 100 % own­er­ship of Sam­son and Infra­Serv Wies­baden respec­tive­ly, are both active in plant automa­tion. The Sam­son sub­sidiary runs a cloud-based mul­ti-ten­ant plat­form for the dig­i­tal­iza­tion, visu­al­iza­tion and auto­mat­ed con­trol of indus­tri­al plants. The plat­form includes flex­i­ble inter­faces for the con­nec­tion of cus­tomer sys­tems and exter­nal ana­lyt­i­cal tools. With the help of the exper­tise gath­ered by the Infra­Serv Wies­baden group, which offers dig­i­tal solu­tions under the prod­uct name ‘KI Konzept’, plant main­te­nance is to be improved based on the smart analy­sis of data (smart maintenance).

“We want to expand our dig­i­tal port­fo­lio based on the UBIX plat­form with Infra­Serv Wies­baden as our coop­er­a­tion part­ner. Our new part­ner strength­ens our exper­tise in smart, net­worked valve engi­neer­ing, flex­i­ble pro­duc­tion process­es and appli­ca­tions to han­dle chal­leng­ing tasks. As a devel­op­er of indus­tri­al sites, Infra­Serv Wies­baden oper­ates its own large sys­tems for sup­ply and dis­pos­al. This means that they already know, under­stand and serve the spe­cif­ic needs of the on-site com­pa­nies that come from many dif­fer­ent branch­es of indus­try. We look for­ward to the coop­er­a­tion and the syn­er­gies it will produce.”

Dr. Andreas Widl, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Samson

“Many medi­um-sized pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies are fac­ing the chal­lenge of hav­ing to build new, dig­i­tal exper­tise to keep up with the evo­lu­tion towards Indus­try 4.0. Smart automa­tion, process con­trol and man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nolo­gies applied in com­bi­na­tion with com­put­er-based big data analy­ses and net­worked infra­struc­tures offer them huge oppor­tu­ni­ties to for­ti­fy their mar­ket posi­tion in the long run. We are very hap­py to join forces with Sam­son as a renowned, inno­v­a­tive part­ner in this area to dri­ve for­ward the use of dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies to our own ben­e­fit as well as to the ben­e­fit of our cus­tomers,” says Mr. Peter Bartholomäus, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Infra­Serv Wiesbaden.

Digital twins and pilot project

The main goal behind the coop­er­a­tion is to joint­ly devel­op and expand Sam­son’s UBIX plat­form. This is to be achieved by Infra­Serv Wies­baden plac­ing pro­gram­ming orders with Sam­son to han­dle spe­cif­ic con­trol process­es with­in its plants or to imple­ment cus­tomer require­ments con­cern­ing smart main­te­nance or plant con­trol. The result will be ‘dig­i­tal twins’ to sim­u­late plant con­trol oper­a­tions, ana­lyze the flows of ener­gy or goods (val­ue chains) as well as design process­es for the smart, pre­dic­tive, mobile main­te­nance of plants and equip­ment. In a next step, these process­es can be fur­ther improved by cross-link­ing a larg­er num­ber of dif­fer­ent devices and sys­tems as well as by apply­ing spe­cial AI soft­ware tools based on big data analy­ses or machine learning.

Infra­Serv Wies­baden will use the UBIX plat­form to han­dle cus­tomer inquiries and mar­ket solu­tions under its own prod­uct name, KI Konzept. To ensure a max­i­mum lev­el of data secu­ri­ty, cus­tomers will have their own ded­i­cat­ed access to the UBIX plat­form through the high-per­for­mance data cen­ters host­ed by Infra­Serv Wiesbaden.

As part of the strate­gic devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion, the two com­pa­nies launched a com­mon pilot project. The project goal is to opti­mize the process­es in the bio­log­i­cal water treat­ment plant oper­at­ed by Infra­Serv Wies­baden in Kalle-Albert Indus­tri­al Park.

The agree­ment was signed in Frank­furt am Main, Ger­many in Octo­ber 2019. The part­ners have agreed to not dis­close any fur­ther details relat­ing to the finan­cial aspects and scope defined in the coop­er­a­tion agreement.