In September 2020 Nanodyn integrated Archangel with its first industrial plant - a state of the art sugar mill and ethanol distillery in Brazil. The integration of this plant was followed by 6 additional sites, all complete by remote within less than 48 hours - in the midst of so-called ‘Lockdown’, nog al. Come what may, and as per the inscription regularly found on NASAs souvenir paraphernalia, at Nanodyn ‘failure is not an option’. We execute, full-stop.
The Archangel system today has captured and transmitted to the cloud over 110bn data points from the DCS, LIMS and data historians infrastructure of plants spanning South Africa and Brazil. With its genesis being one of grand ambitions, Archangel is now a verifiably mature new generation technology of the highest sophistication. One which, as was its founding intent, is seeking to become the global reference system of its kind. As ever - Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi.
Primary and secondary industrial enterprises are beset by a particularly disparate and complicated menagerie of IT, OT, Manufacturing/Mining Execution System (MES) and related digital technologies. In some cases many dozens, if not hundreds, of software packages of one form or another. Whether it be SCADASs, ERP systems, payroll software or vehicle tracking applications, the industrial sector digital landscape is an ever sprawling multi-dimensional ecosystem. Data being generated, communicated or stored everywhere and in almost everything, as if our World has in some manner actually undertaken the beginnings of a transition from the all physical to some degree of hybrid with that of the Matrix immortalised waterfall-like tapestries of code being the true make-up of all that surrounds us - if only we could pierce the veil and truly see the nature of our reality!
However, unlike the Matrix, this digital tapestry is not seamless and centralised. It’s not modular, nor reconfigurable. It’s not customisable, nor flexible. Data absolutely everywhere, but accessible to almost no one. Not a harmonious symphony of integrated technologies, but rather a cacophony of systems of every imaginable species, language and creed. And it’s an expensive cacophony. A generally confusing and unmanageable one too. Overseen by a half-dozen ‘IT guys’ at best, or an ever more regularly spotted ‘Digital Transformation Officer’, charged as they are with miraculously ensuring that everything functions to spec, and that the enterprise simultaneously attains its digital transformation objectives so as to realise the potential of the 4IR. How, may I ask? And now the process engineers are learning to code and want to directly interact and tinker with these ‘uninteractable’ systems. Fun times are indeed ahead.
What’s more, in almost every organisation, someone somewhere, or everyone all of the time, is still wading through all these technologies to extract hard to find data, which ends up on Excel or a BI tool of some form, and emerges as a post-facto semi-manual analysis, typically weeks out of date. Considerable human energies are invested in a high-friction data seeking and analytical process, and the outcomes thereof, even if of the highest standard, are reasonably useless. Something has to change. Well, in fact, it has. Archangel is the change. It was purpose built to precisely attend to this phenomenon of an underperforming and over-expensive IT/OT paradigm.
The trajectory of humanity changed in a material sense on each occasion that we advanced our capacity to precisely measure. Whether applying it to time, distance, temperature or the cosmos, the capacity to instantaneously, accurately and repeatedly measure brings about a step-change in our potential. Nanodyn identified; however, that industrial systems typically can’t precisely measure. For all the digital infrastructure expenditure over years, precise measurement beyond a few variables is generally illusive, and doing so on a systemic basis just impossible. So impossible, in fact, as to be unimaginable. And where promised by entrenched IT/OT oligarchy that systemic measurement is even possible, the quoted costs to pursue as such are simply unaffordable. Enter Nanodyn and Archangel.
Archangel was built as a digital blanket which can be cast over the entirety of an organisations software landscape, no matter its size and complexity. In a process referred to as ETL - Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) - it extracts any amount, diversity or frequency of data that an entire supply chain can conceivably produce from all the disparate sources, transfers such data to the cloud, transforms the data into formats optimised for the application of ML and AI, and loads the data into hyper-modern data bases designed to enable real-time Advanced Process Control (APC).
Thereafter, it subjects the captured data to a battery of ML algorithms in order to generate actionable intelligence, and then communicates this intelligence to a relevant human or machine to act thereupon. And it does all of this in real or near-real time. It is a highly sophisticated, best of breed technology.
Accordingly, Archangel is intended to be used as a Data Engineering tool which aggregates all data, and democratises access to all data. Weather projections, commodity futures, sensor outputs, production records, everything. All available in real-time for interrogation, analysis and consumption, whether by humans, machines, ML algorithms or AI technologies. The comprehensive interrelated and interconnected complexity of vast industrial systems can be understood and optimised in real-time. It’s a game changer. And it works.
With such power, incremental efficacy gains can be realised and maintained along the length of the production and supply chain system. The problem is identified, opportunity specified, solution developed and implemented, and its utility measured. Moreover, given that industrial processes are highly dynamic, differing points in the supply chain or subsidiary processes in the production system will present differing extents of optimisation potential from hour to hour and day to day. Such is the operational reality of the primary and secondary industrial domain Nonetheless, with a system-wide solution which functions in real-time, the efficacy gains can be realised to the extents that they present themselves as, where and when they arise. An ability to be dynamically responsive to dynamic processes.
Archangel marks the end of segregated digital ecosystems in the industrial sphere. It is also the death of Excel, Power Point and the burgeoning family of BI tools which all bring such distress to industrial professionals at all levels in their organisations. More importantly, it marks the beginning of a new era where the promise of I40 can be readily achieved.
No upfront fees. No per user expenses. No recurring version upgrade charges. No camouflaged expenses lying in wait at some indiscernible future juncture. We keep it simple, by means of a fixed monthly subscription adjusted to the scale of data ingestion.
Become the industry leader. Partner with Nanodyn. Lets us reach and rise, together.
Mr. Andrew Charter, CEO at Nanodyn
