STEP-SF4.0 – Sugarcane Technology Enabling Project for Sugar Factory 4.0

STEP-SF4.0 was a research and development project that was a public-private
partnership between the South African Government's Department of Science and
Innovation's (DSI) Sector Innovation Fund (SIF) programme and the South African
sugarcane processing industry. The SMRI's proposal for the project was approved
by the DSI on 17 January 2019 and was completed on 31 March 2022. The project
was overseen by a Steering Committee comprising government and industry
representatives and a Technical Review Committee comprising of industry
experts.
Background
Historically, the South African sugar industry has attained very high levels of efficiency and process performance,
supported by generations of specialist sugar technologists and operational
staff who had invested their entire careers in the industry, many of whom have
either retired or relocated. Whilst it is acknowledged there are several
reasons for the marked decrease in process performance and efficiency that has
occurred at least over the last decade, the loss of key skills and knowledge
has certainly contributed significantly to this. For example, the loss of pan
boiling skills is an often-cited example that has resulted in a decreasing
trend in boiling house recovery. There is a great need to capture and embed the
knowledge of industry experts and skilled operation staff in interactive
operating procedures, decision-support and troubleshooting toolkits and control
systems, and improve the performance and competitiveness of the South Africa
sugar processing industry.
What is this project about?
The project, entitled “STEP-SF4.0 – Sugarcane Technology Enabling Project for Sugar Factory 4.0" was designed to develop and implement information management systems and
decision-support tools aligned with the 4th Industrial Revolution/Industry 4.0 smart
manufacturing to enable the sugar processing industry to make meaningful
improvements over current factory performance levels. The theme of the
STEP-SF4.0 project was to combine sugar technology, data analytics and smart
manufacturing principles to drive productivity and efficiency in sugar
factories. Sub-projects were constructed to target areas of the
sugar factory where significant improvement potential has been identified, and
especially where these build on existing tools and projects that have shown
promise.
What is Industry 4.0?
Industry 4.0 is a name increasingly applied to initiatives that arise
from or lead to increased digitalisation of industries, targeting process
improvement, productivity optimisation and automation. These objectives
are made possible by recent advances in:
- the speed and quantity at which information can be transferred and analysed,
- improved sophistication of data analytics, facilitating the conversion of vast
systems of factory data into information and knowledge for driving real-time
data analysis and process decision support, and
- the advent of smart devices and sensors for increasing the volume and detail of
data that can be generated in manufacturing processes.
Industry 4.0 projects can range in scope from modules that focus on single unit
operations to factory or industry-wide solutions for improving productivity and
efficiency. Industry 4.0 applications can involve any, or all, of the
nine digital industrial technologies viz. 1) big data
analytics, 2) simulation, 3) additive manufacturing, 4) horizontal and vertical
data/information integration, 5) industrial internet of things, 6) augmented reality, 7) advanced
robotics, 8) cloud computing and cybersecurity.
Architecture of Industry 4.0 projects
Figure 1 provides a visualisation of the architecture of an Industry 4.0
application in industry. Each application must be driven by factory operating
data, i.e. local data sources. These are typically housed in
information management systems such as the factory data and laboratory
information historians and offline systems including equipment installation
manuals, spreadsheets and paper-based records. During the development phase
of each application, historical performance data may be interrogated via
empirical, mechanistic or simulation analysis to identify causal and correlated
agents between available measured factors and calculated and measured plant
performance. The learnings from the development phase are
synthesised and compiled into a deployment application that is
intended to be run live in the factory. The deployment application should
collect and analyse incoming data in real or near-real time and provide outputs
that facilitate rapid and effective decision-making or trouble shooting. The
deployment application outputs must integrate with a visualisation system
(i.e. trending software, custom dashboard, interactive simulator or “digital
twin") that provides the right information to the right people, especially
those responsible for decision-making, corrective action and overall production
oversight, at the right time.
Figure 1: Architecture of Industry 4.0 projects (adapted from Wallner PHF (2018) How Industry 4.0 is changing our way of developing. Seminar: Future proof your business for the 4th Industrial Revolution. 21 June 2018 Umhlanga)
https://smri.sharepoint.com/:b:/s/teams/ResearchDevelopment/EW3gBY4WLfpJphL89Q4iWaABmo9EqSSqj0snIbHMzX-lKg?e=CBpd5U
The overall application must be built on infrastructure that allows data collection, aggregation, analysis, storage, retrieval and transmission. This may be locally based at the factory, but could also be remotely based, e.g. in the factory administration offices or even in the head office of companies with more than one technical operation. In both cases hardware and communication protocols will be needed to permit the required level of data management.
A significant feature of Industry 4.0 projects is that the software and hardware for each application can be chosen uniquely to suit the needs of the factory and the application. The Development phase portrayed in Figure 1 utilises MATLAB®, StatisticaTM and Microsoft® Excel. Any other platforms that allow the necessary data aggregation and analysis could be used instead. Similarly, the deployment application could be built in any of several suitable applications. The visualisation step involves development of dashboards and graphical user interfaces that allow factory staff to easily access the knowledge that the Industry 4.0 modules create. This is where the potential of any application is translated into actual benefits. Visualisation can be implemented on existing factory systems or in custom-built applications using software involved in development, deployment¸ or third-party visualisation software.
Staged approach to Sugar Factory 4.0
Figure 2 is a common representation of the stages of Industry 4.0. Industry
4.0 projects may deliver information on the status of a process (stage 1),
analysis of why the process has the observed status (stage 2) and predictions
on the progression of the process status (stage 3). Stage 4 projects use the
combined information from the previous stages to develop automation and control
technologies. Each one of these stages has potential to create value
opportunities for a particular focus area, through highlighting areas of loss
or cost, identifying causes of lost opportunity, providing strategies for
reducing lost opportunity, or controlling the process to a higher level of
efficiency. The value of benefit will vary between applications and will depend
on the efficiency attained before their implementation. As a general rule, the
value of the benefit achieved is anticipated to be higher at each successive
stage of implementation. Thus, any project that can generate an implementable
solution at any one of the four stages is expected to result in cost reduction
or increased value recovery.
The STEP-SF4.0 project targeted the first three stages. Automation projects are not
anticipated to be tackled within the programme, but recommendations for
potential automation applications may be among the outputs of the programme.

Figure 2: Staged approach to industry 4.0 (adapted from https://www.i-scoop.eu/industry-4-0/#Industry_40_design_principles)
The role of the SMRI in Sugar Factory 4.0
While SMRI staff generally lack the operations skills for running factories efficiently, they are
uniquely positioned to facilitate the development of Industry 4.0 applications.
The key knowledge investment into these applications take place in the development and deployment phases,
where the supervisory role is carried out by individuals who have a thorough
knowledge of sugar technology, who employ systems thinking, have sound
understanding of statistics in analysis of large complex data sets with strong
non-linearities and time dependency, have strong process modelling skills, and
have sufficient time to investigate different strategies to achieve a defined
goal. For example, these skills are employed by the SMRI researchers who worked
on the STEP-Bio Energy Monitoring project, which was expanded upon in this
STEP-SF4.0 project.
In addition, the SMRI is the custodian of an enormous
database of factory performance figures, dating back many decades, and it has
strong relationships with all sugar factories in South Africa and their
affiliate mills in southern Africa. Also, the SMRI is the primary
developer of NIRS prediction equations for the rapid analysis of intermediate
sugar factory streams. Offering this as a base technology into the
STEP-SF4.0 project enables the almost real-time analysis of fructose, glucose
and sucrose of all sugar process streams – a world first - and enables the
production of new factory performance data and insights to be gained. The
SMRI has a strong track record of collaboration with higher education
institutions in South Africa and internationally and has historically leveraged
these collaborations to bring new ideas and technologies into the South African
sugar industry.
It is acknowledged that, to remain globally competitive, individual factories or sugar companies might be considering implementing Industry 4.0 projects within their own factories using in-house technical support staff and consultants. However, the nature of these projects is somewhat different to traditional sugar technology projects; Pioneer Industry 4.0 projects around the world make use of advanced data analytics skills and software application development. There are few, if any, local or international experts or consultants who have experience integrating these skills with sugar technology. An important objective of the proposed project was to draw on the wisdom of skilled sugar factory and SMRI staff and the capabilities of advances in data analytics to codify sugar technology knowledge into applications that facilitate improvements in factory performance metrics.
Progress of STEP-SF4.0
A project scoping workshop was held at the SMRI in December 2018 to inform the
industry of the project and the concept of Sugar Factory 4.0 and to generate
ideas for projects that could be undertaken within the time frame. Four
piloting projects were approved as follows and commenced in May 2020: STEP-SF4.0 Pilot Projects (smri.org)
In addition to the pilot phase projects being implemented with the
assistance of external consultants, SMRI motivated and received funding for three
additional development projects, on 27 May 2020, and a fourth one on14
September 2021. These projects were largely SMRI-driven, the first three
involving the development of instruments and sensors at host factories to
provide additional useful data for process monitoring, while the fourth entitled
“The feasibility of using NIRS-based chemometric methods for the identification
of deteriorated cane” built on an early-stage research project undertaken by
the SMRI. Details of the projects are given here: STEP-SF4.0 Development Projects (smri.org)
The SMRI arranged and chaired a workshop at the virtual SASTA congress
on 19 August 2021 on the STEP-SF4.0 programme. Various speakers from the SMRI
and external consultants contributing to STEP-SF4.0 projects presented talks on
aspects of the application of 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies and
techniques to the sugar industry as well as highlights from specific STEP-SF4.0
projects being run in the factories. sasta
congress 2021 – applying 4ir technologies to address factory performance
(sasugar.co.za)
The workshop was attended by 153 delegates from a diversity of organisations. The workshop was well received by the audience and was considered to have been very successful in its objective of raising awareness of the applications and benefits of 4IR technologies to the South and southern African sugarcane processing industries and in particular the projects being undertaken at South African factories by the SMRI and collaborators under the flag of STEP-SF4.0.
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