It was during the 2022 Manufacturing the Future Summit, hosted by KCF, that Prabhu illuminated the path for which Kaneka finds successes and how other companies can navigate their own digital transformation journeys. starting with his guiding vision:
This guiding vision for businesses starting their transformation journey focuses on concrete outcomes, closely aligned with core business goals, showcasing the central role of creating value in every facet of the transformation process.
By uncovering issues predictively, Kaneka has experienced better preparation by having replacement parts available and ready during planned downtime. Saving hours of time hunting down the equipment and transporting it if there would have been a catastrophic failure.
One last example is with an evaporation system that was getting a larger volume of vapors causing a pull in condensable vapors. The knockout pot on the discharge was full, meaning there was discharge fighting against resistance causing the rotary vacuum pump to work harder and a high vibration detected. Draining the knockout pot was the recommended action to clear what seemed to be plugged. Utilizing data proactively, the team’s resolution was a design change. Installing a liquid ring vacuum pump in place of a pervious drive screw type pump allowed for a directly driven asset with no gearbox.
Another example of moving from reactive to predictive was with their impact modifiers operation. In June of last year, while on a joint call between the Kaneka and KCF Sentry Services team, an alarm was triggered. Sentry Services provided some preliminary and live analysis that the fault was most likely caused by misalignment or a coupling issue. Immediately following the call, the assets was inspected, and a faulty coupling was found. This alert gave the team time to respond proactively.
