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Belgian cement plant: live insights, even for untrained operators

Avoiding dust nuisance with live wind analysis when unloading ships.

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In brief

Rules of thumb out of people's heads, live with the operator

A crane unloads bulk goods from ships into a hopper on the quay. A residential area lies close by, and dust nuisance must be avoided. Captains of Logic brings live insights from measurement data to the operators. The rules of thumb are now always applied correctly.

The challenge

Wind is unpredictable, and the knowledge was in people's heads

In a densely populated country like Belgium, industry has to take its surroundings into account. The production manager follows wind direction, wind force and gusts to decide when a ship can be unloaded. If the wind changes during operations, nuisance can still arise.

Over the years, rules of thumb emerged: how many gusts above a threshold, and how long the wind stays above a certain speed. But wind constantly changes in force and direction. This assessment is too complex to follow from the crane cab. So a manager had to stay present and attentive.

Diagram: a crane unloads bulk goods from a ship into a hopper on the quay, with wind blowing towards a residential areahoppershipwindhousingquay

What we did

Distributed automation in practice

  • Two connectors on the measurement sources. The platform reads in the data from the on-site IoT weather station and live weather data from a private sensor network. A connector is a link that pulls the data from one source. Captains of Logic brings data from these different sources together in the data hub.
  • Logic on the data stream. A physical model separates the mechanical movement of the wind vane from the real airflow.
  • A user application for the operators. The operators see on site, on a simple screen, what they need to know. Algorithms send notifications to the operators and to production management.
  • A dashboard for production management. Production management can consult all data and signals on a detailed dashboard. The platform stores the historical data for reporting and evaluation.
  • Condition monitoring. Our team monitors that the system works properly.
Operator screen showing the wind status over the last five minutes and the Unload signal
The operator's screen: the wind status over the last five minutes and, at a glance, the signal whether unloading can go ahead.
Dashboard showing the wind exceedances of the past hour, per five minutes
On the production management dashboard: the exceedances of the past hour, per five minutes.

Result

The domain knowledge now lives in a system

  • The rules of thumb are always applied correctly.
  • The domain knowledge is captured in a system.
  • A crane operator working on the site for the first time knows, without training, what is expected of them.

What this means for you

Growing without every new colleague first needing years of experience

Every company has its rules of thumb. In your company they may be the rules of your planners, or the experience of the technician who knows which alarms matter. As long as that knowledge lives only in people's heads, your growth rests on a few people. With live data and simple feedback at the right moment, that knowledge belongs to the whole team.

See the applications in your sectorHow it works

Next step

Shall we work out your first application together?

A worked-out Proof of Value lets you make a well-founded decision.

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Prefer to call or email right away? Pieter Langsweirdt · +32 498 516 440 · pieter@captainsoflogic.com