Bayer Crop Science drives production efficiencies using Edge2Web and AWS

Customer Profile

Bayer’s Crop Science division (BCS) is the world’s leading agriculture enterprise, with businesses in crop protection, seeds and traits, and digital farming. BCS’s leadership in agriculture provides tailored solutions for farmers to plant, grow, and protect their harvests using less land, water, and energy. BCS offers a broad portfolio of high-value seeds, improved plant traits, innovative chemical and biological crop protection products, and extensive customer service for sustainable agriculture. BCS also provides a large-scale digital agriculture platform, delivering a data-driven ecosystem for farmers that combines insights, remote technology, agronomic solutions, and artificial intelligence to generate the best possible outcomes across every field.

Before beginning their digital transformation journey, BCS relied on a combination of paper-based and on-premise plant applications to track asset performance, product quality, order execution, inventory, and other vital metrics. Performance reporting was slow and inconsistent across sites and geographies. Additionally, available KPIs were difficult for stakeholders to access and interpret due to a lack of context and consistency across operating units. BCS’s operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) leaders embarked on a digital factory journey with the following goals:

  • Implement OEE and other lean manufacturing KPIs systematically across all production sites
  • Improve asset availability, product yield, and product quality
  • Automate, integrate, and standardize production processes
  • Simplify, standardize, and optimize machine operators' daily tasks
  • Enable real-time production reporting to drive productivity and optimize performance
  • Incorporate existing shop floor terminology and processes to speed system roll-out across three global regions and seven spoken languages

Edge2Web Solution

After multiple attempts to find a sustainable solution and an extensive vendor evaluation, BCS chose AWS IoT SiteWise for factory asset and timeseries data storage. Amazon S3 is used to store configuration data, and Amazon RDS holds structured data. For KPI configuration, computation, and visualization, BCS selected Edge2Web Factory Insights, a leading SaaS smart manufacturing solution, for core KPI (OEE) tracking and visualization. BCS uses Edge2Web Director for custom analytics, and to implement electronic work instructions for shop floor workers. BCS also uses Edge2Web Flow Server for asset and process monitoring, KPI computations, and to exchange data with other plant systems, including:

  • ERP
  • Order management and execution
  • Inventory management
  • Laboratory management
  • Packaging management

BCS’s OEE smart factory application, which has been deployed at scale at more than 40 sites globally, provides the following digital services:

  • Equipment performance monitoring and reporting
  • Production operator overrides for downtime reasons and quality data
  • Product quality tracking
  • Digital work instructions for equipment maintenance and repair

Edge2Web Customer Outcomes

BCS achieved numerous benefits by implementing Edge2Web tools and smart manufacturing solutions:

  • Implemented OEE and other lean manufacturing analytics at 40+ sites across three global regions
  • Improved production line performance by as much as 18%
  • Improved throughput on seed quality testing lines by as much as 300%
  • Reduced off-site tolling costs due to improved manufacturing efficiencies
  • Simplified and optimized production operators' daily tasks
  • Improved communication between all levels of the organization
  • Enabled real-time production reporting to drive asset availability, product quality, and capacity utilization
  • Deployed and scaled Edge2Web solutions across production sites with minimal disruption to existing operations
  • Positioned BCS to quickly expand operational intelligence using machine learning and AI solutions from Edge2Web

"Edge2Web solutions have enabled us to accelerate the implementation, roll-out, and global scaling of critical OEE applications. Edge2Web has become a trusted partner in our digital transformation journey."

David Kaltmayer

Director, Manufacturing Systems and Products Bayer Crop Science

About Edge2Web

Edge2Web is a leading provider of applications and tools that help industrial companies drive transformative operating improvements. Edge2Web Factory Insights is a ready-made smart manufacturing solution that enables manufacturers to reduce equipment downtime, improve product quality, and optimize production processes. Edge2Web data visualization and app builder tools are used to achieve a wide range of digital industrial outcomes such as asset health monitoring, predictive maintenance, product quality and cost analysis, energy optimization, digital work instructions, and many others.

All Edge2Web solutions are AWS FTR approved and are available on the AWS Marketplace.