Schneider Electric’s Introduces EcoStruxure Profit Advisor, a New IIoT Solution that Helps Enable Control of Real-Time Profitability

Schneider Electric has introduced EcoStruxure Profit Advisor, a new IIoT solution that will help enable its industrial customers to measure and control the profitability of their operations in real-time.  Developed through a partnership with Seeq, a provider of software and services that help enable data-driven decision making, EcoStruxure Profit Advisor uses Big Data analytics to measure the financial performance of an industrial operation in real-time, from the equipment asset level of a plant up to the process unit, plant area, plant site, and enterprise levels.  On-premise or cloud-enabled, Profit Advisor works with process historians to mine both historical and real-time data.  It then processes that data through Schneider Electric’s proprietary segment-specific accounting algorithms to help determine real-time operational profitability and potential savings.

Because current cost accounting systems often only measure the financial performance of the industrial operation at the overall plant level, it is sometimes difficult for companies to understand the financial impact operational changes have on business performance.  To address that need, Profit Advisor allows plant personnel to better see and understand the ROI and business value their actions, activities and assets are contributing to the business in real time. It helps to empower the workforce to make better business decisions with a variety of data analytics, which can be displayed in various formats, to help drive operational profitability improvements, safely.

Profit Advisor layers real-time accounting models onto the Seeq Workbench to become a scalable and repeatable solution for multiple segments, enabling customers to help both measure and control their profitability.  And because it can be integrated with Schneider Electric’s simulation and modelling software in a digital twin environment, users are further enabled to help forecast profitability under different conditions or if changes to the operation are made.  Overall, the software provides:

1. Historical Data Review: Profit Advisor can evaluate the historical performance of the plant to better assess its operational profitability, helping plant personnel analyze and understand how the operation performed during different conditions.  It helps enable the workforce to identify performance-improving initiatives.  And since it can be tied to individual pieces of equipment, it can provide that information for a range of assets in the operation.

2. Real Time Performance Indication: Profit Advisor can indicate current performance and inform plant personnel when their operating decisions are making the business more profitable.  Actual ROI and return on improvements will be visible, enabling plant personnel to better concentrate and refine their efforts to the actions that provide the greatest financial returns.  It also enables plant personnel to determine which parts of operation are constraining operational profitability and more accurately estimate the business value their decisions might actually create.

3. Profit Planning: Profit Advisor helps to empower process engineers to better predict the profitability of the changes they are proposing, which can help to minimize project risk and eliminate waste.

More information on EcoStruxure Profit Advisor can be found in this Video.  

Craig Resnick, ARC Advisory Group, commented, “Despite all the new technology and capabilities available to the automation market today, many industrial operations are still performing sub-optimally when it comes to the potential business value they can generate.  Optimizing business value in industrial operations requires scalable, open solutions that help users leverage every industrial asset.  This requires shrinking the time to asset benefit from the smallest mechanical and electrical assets to the supply chain and enterprise.  Such an approach could ultimately enable industry to move from monitoring business value to actually controlling it. This would include controlling business functions, such as, for example, scheduling and planning, that until now were purely transactional.  This ability to actually control business value in industrial operations is a real breakthrough and will result in direct positive effects to companies’ bottom lines.”

Keywords: Profit Advisor, Big Data Analytics, Automation Systems, Real-Time Profit Performance, ARC Advisory Group.