Industry
A plant usually knows its energy consumption, but not which process drives it
The AI Business Center Foundation (AIBC) is a think tank and advisory partner that helps the boards of construction, industrial and technical-services companies adopt artificial intelligence so that it delivers measurable results and builds competitive advantage. In managing energy and site utilities we start by assigning consumption to processes.
The energy bill is no longer a fixed cost. It has become a decision that can be assigned to a process
Electricity, heat, cooling, water and compressed air are among the largest costs of an industrial plant. Most plants know total consumption from invoices and main meters, but cannot say how much a particular product, line or shift costs. Without that, no tool, including one based on AI, will show where to save.
How cost and risk arise
- metering points named in a way only the maintenance department understands,
- consumption not assigned to lines, shifts and products,
- environmental reporting prepared by hand, from different data than the financial report,
- investment decisions on energy efficiency taken without a reliable baseline,
- customer questions about a product’s environmental footprint with no ready answer.
The first step
A vocabulary of metering points and their assignment to processes, lines and products, with an owner for each measure. This usually shows where data already exist, where a measurement is missing and which consumption is worth analysing first.
What the Foundation does
- Semantic transformation, that is, organising a company’s names, processes and data so that people, language models and board reports understand them the same way: one vocabulary for energy, production and financial data.
- AI audit and strategy: which applications of analytics and AI in energy management are justified in the plant.
- Compliance and ESG: which reporting obligations apply to the plant directly and which indirectly through its customers.
- Grants and funding: energy-efficiency and circular-economy projects in public programmes.
Frequently asked questions
Does a plant need new meters to get started?
Not always. Measurements often exist already, but the metering points have names that nobody links to lines, shifts and products. We first organise the vocabulary of metering points and their assignment to processes; only then does it become clear where a measurement is missing.
How does this connect with environmental reporting?
Reporting requires consumption and emissions to be assigned to activities. If energy and utilities data have shared names and owners, the same data feed the board report, replies to customers asking about environmental footprint, and funding applications.
Are there grants for projects of this kind?
Energy-efficiency and circular-economy projects are among the priorities of many public programmes. Conditions depend on current calls for proposals and on the region, so we check them for each specific project.
Let’s start with an assessment
Let’s talk about the data the plant already has, before it buys another metering system.