Logan Aluminum is the largest can sheet facility in North America. The aluminum rolling mill, based in southwestern Kentucky, supplies nearly half the aluminum sheeting—more than 2 billion pounds per year—needed for canned beer, soda, and other beverages in the North American market as well as some sheeting needed for the automotive industry. The aluminum rolls Logan manufactures can weigh as much as 50,000 pounds.
With that amount of metal moving around its plant, Logan Aluminum wanted to better use digital technologies to ensure worker safety, reduce energy use, and find cost efficiencies to remain competitive. The company already had installed as many as 3,000 smart sensors on its manufacturing equipment, but the data captured was fragmented and siloed.
From Silo to Cloud
Despite collecting thousands of data points, Logan Aluminum was using less than five percent of the information, most of which was used to review inter-process operations or respond to customer queries. Only a handful of people could retrieve the data, and they couldn’t see upstream or downstream data. The company’s different business units had no direct access to data and had to rely on measurement systems and other people to collect and provide requested information.
Logan Aluminum began to explore ways to leverage its operational data. Initial goals were to improve performance, minimize risk, and reduce operating costs. The company partnered with Hitachi Vantara after a two-day workshop, which resulted in a five-year digitization plan that integrated manufacturing, supply chain, and technical operations and highlighted potential benefits.
At the heart of the company’s digital transformation was the creation of a cloud infrastructure that hosts a data lake. It eliminates the data siloes and centralizes operational data from the plant’s machines—some 35,000 data points for each of the 250 aluminum coils manufactured every day. All employees can access the centralized data repository, so workers can monitor manufacturing processes, productivity, product quality, employee safety, and equipment maintenance.
A Cloud-based Data Repository
The cloud-based solution also integrates Hitachi’s Pentaho Intelligent DataOps Platform, along with Lumada Manufacturing Insights and Video Insights. The Hitachi solution has improved the manufacturer’s production, safety, budgeting, and forecasting processes. Logan Aluminum has been able to optimize production lines, predict and prevent machine failures to extend asset life, and reduce workplace accidents related to industrial equipment. Data-driven forecasting has resulted in more accurate supply and demand models, enabling the company to adjust production as needed.
Logan Aluminum has benefitted from Hitachi’s experience with IT and OT in the manufacturing arena and its expertise in shifting the company culture to embrace digitalization, says Vijay Kamineni, business transformation leader at Logan Aluminum. The changes have been estimated to save Logan Aluminum millions of dollars.
The partnership with Hitachi Vantara has been so successful that Logan Aluminum was recognized by the Manufacturing Leadership Council. Logan Aluminum earned an award for co-creating a data integration system that supports fast, accurate data analytics and artificial intelligence in manufacturing.
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