Anonymous Minerals Company

A leading international supplier of high-performance minerals — including calcium carbonates, clays, and kaolins — faced mounting pressure to increase output for customers in construction, paints and coatings, plastics, and sealants markets without committing to costly capital expansion. The core constraint was the company's complex mineral drying process, which involved filtration, drying, pulverizing, and production classification across multiple stages. High process variability in dryer operations created production bottlenecks, and energy-intensive natural gas drying represented a significant and largely unoptimized cost per ton of output. Without intervention, the company could not satisfy growing customer demand while maintaining the operational economics that underpin its value-added processing model.

The company engaged Rockwell Automation to deploy FactoryTalk Analytics PavilionX, a model predictive control (MPC) industrial analytics platform, to a single processing line as a pilot. Rockwell Automation's engineers began by conducting a formal process study — collecting real-time operating data, defining control variables, and building process models tailored to the site's unique drying characteristics. The deployment followed Rockwell Automation's ValueFirst methodology, which included an upfront benefits analysis aligned to the company's business targets. The MPC application was implemented on the dryer control loop and made accessible through a browser-based interface providing role-based visibility for operators, process engineers, and plant management. The full deployment, from data collection through commissioning, was completed in three months.

The project exceeded its original investment targets and delivered payback within the company's stated goals. Key outcomes from the initial line deployment:

• 12% increase in production on the instrumented processing line
• 6% reduction in natural gas consumption per ton of output
• 50% decrease in process variability in dryer operations

The smoother dryer control profiles translated directly into more consistent product quality and greater throughput from existing assets. Corporate-wide visibility into plant performance was enabled through the browser-based dashboard. Based on these results, the company expanded the FactoryTalk Analytics PavilionX application to two adjacent dryers and began evaluating further MPC deployments across milling, drying, and calcining operations in North America and Europe.

• Start with a constrained pilot: Deploying MPC on a single processing line first allows ROI validation before wider rollout — this company expanded only after exceeding targets on line one.
• Real-time data infrastructure is a prerequisite: A formal process study and real-time data collection setup were necessary first steps before any control models could be built.
• Energy and throughput gains are linked: Reducing process variability simultaneously cut natural gas use and increased production — treating them as a single optimization target yielded compound returns.
• Payback timelines in minerals processing can be short: A three-month implementation with payback within stated goals suggests MPC is viable even under conservative capital allocation constraints.
• Browser-based visibility drives adoption: Role-appropriate access for operators, engineers, and management improved organizational buy-in and enabled corporate-level performance monitoring.