DSM Nutritional Products is one of the world’s leading suppliers of vitamins, carotenoids and other ingredients to the feed, food, pharmaceutical and personal care industries.

By implementing an energy management information system (EMiS) from Scanenergi Solutions, a DSM site in France has been able to slash the time and resources needed to manage its energy data collection and reporting, significantly improving operational efficiency and ensuring a regular and reliable energy reporting process that is critical to its business.

Previously, the energy reporting process at DSM’s site in Village-Neuf involved the manual reading of approximately 300 meters, and then entering the data into a series of complex Excel spreadsheets by hand. The reliance on manual labour meant the readings were recorded only once a month, there were inevitably some mis-readings, and the company relied heavily on the few members of staff who had developed the spreadsheets.

“The spreadsheets had been refined over many years and we were increasingly reliant on the few people who actually understood them in depth. We were frightened of making changes for fear of compromising the traceability and validity of the data,” said Laurent Marzullo, Improvement Manager at DSM in Village-Neuf.

Streamlined data capture and automated reporting

Today, the situation at Village-Neuf is very different. In 2011 Scanenergi Solutions helped DSM to implement an EMiS to drastically streamline the data capture and reporting procedure.

“All the energy data is now in one system, with the automatic capture of the main energy meters, production volumes and important climatic data enabling us to establish accurate baselines and targets for our main areas of the site,” said Laurent Debuy, Utilities Expert at Village-Neuf.

The overall objective of the project was not to save energy costs by reducing consumption, but to provide a robust platform that would ensure the data being captured and reported was valid and that management reporting was timely and actionable. Successful delivery of these elements would generate sufficient benefits to justify the investment.

More accurate, reliable data

One of the major benefits of the EMiS was the improvement in the validity and availability of the meter data. Approximately 25% of all the site’s metering is now captured automatically, allowing for detailed analysis of performance, while the introduction of PDAs has enabled the manually-read meters to be recorded more efficiently and accurately.

“The PDAs enable staff to scan a barcode on the meter and to enter the meter reading directly into the PDA. Any errors are identified immediately and corrected on the PDA. The data is then automatically uploaded into the EMiS,” explained Laurent Debuy

Quick, clear payback

In terms of the return on investment, Laurent Marzullo explained that the aim of the project was not to directly reduce energy costs, but to implement a solid, reliable and versatile energy reporting platform that was more efficient in terms of data collection, provided more accurate energy data, produced clear and actionable reports and enabled DSM to improve the overall operational efficiency at the site:

“If we needed to calculate the investment payback, we could easily calculate the cost saving of not having to spend two days a month preparing energy reports. But our priority was to find a robust platform to deliver regular and reliable energy reports. With the EMiS in place, we can now switch our attention to the next phase of the process: reducing the energy and water that we use at the site.”