Glossary

What is process optimization?

Process optimization is the practice of adjusting a manufacturing process to maximize production outcomes such as yield, throughput, product quality, and energy efficiency, without violating any process constraints.

What is process optimization software?

Process optimization software helps organizations continuously monitor manufacturing processes and improve process performance with control parameter recommendations. Many solutions rely on statistical or physics-based models, which provide a mathematical representation of manufacturing processes based on physical or thermodynamic equations. Process optimization software is often part of a suite of asset performance management solutions that monitor industrial assets and identify risks.

Why is process optimization software important?

Organizations adopt process optimization strategies and software solutions to improve profitability, maximize yield, improve energy efficiency, and ensure product quality. In manufacturing, process optimization software builds upon experience-driven and rules-based control logic by augmenting an organization’s ability to adapt to changing operating conditions and drive continuous process improvements.

What is AI-driven process optimization?

AI-driven process optimization is the practice of combining advanced machine learning (ML) and optimization techniques with statistical and physics-based models to improve manufacturing outcomes. Using the most appropriate optimization technique for a specific process – whether AI, statistical, physics-based, or a combination – is critical to helping manufacturers maximize the value of process optimization efforts.

In fact, AI-driven process optimization can change how production teams operate. It can dynamically identify optimal settings as operating conditions change, provide AI-powered and explainable recommendations, and allow production teams to quickly access operational expertise via generative AI. Incorporating artificial intelligence into process optimization software and strategies supports operational adaptability and performance.

By implementing AI-driven process optimization software, organizations can:

• Safely push the boundaries of process operations beyond historical conditions and closer to original equipment manufacturer (OEM) design limits
• Flexibly apply ML, statistical, and physics-based models to improve outcomes
• Monitor relevant production and process efficiency metrics in near real-time
• Unify siloed data from operational systems, ERP systems, asset management systems, process simulators, and lab information management systems (LIMS)
• Maintain an archive of process configurations to track performance over time
• Reduce off-spec product and time to detect off-spec product through manufacturing process optimization

How does C3 AI enable AI-driven process optimization?

C3 AI Process Optimization helps organizations improve production processes by identifying opportunities to modify control points based on production objectives such as profitability, output or quality. The application applies ML models on top of statistical and physics-based models to ensure the optimization provides actionable recommendations for process optimization in manufacturing.

C3 AI applications are built on the C3 AI Platform, an end-to-end platform for developing enterprise AI applications. The C3 AI Platform offers a scalable and secure approach to enterprise AI, providing the necessary tools and capabilities to quickly design, develop, and operate advanced, industrial-scale AI applications.

The unique model-driven architecture of the C3 AI Platform allows organizations to build AI applications with less code, time, and effort compared to other methods. It features an end-to-end architecture to integrate with existing enterprise software systems, ingest into domain object models, apply out-of-the-box and configurable AI algorithms, and enable end-user interaction through intuitive, simple user interface applications.

C3 AI also provides a proven methodology and best practices for customer developers to configure, extend, and develop proprietary AI applications. C3 AI shares this methodology in a center of excellence collaboration model, delivering proven results as demonstrated by a decade of experience working with some of the world’s largest organizations on industrial-scale use cases.