Compagnie des Ciments Belges

Compagnie des Ciments Belges (CCB), a Belgian cement producer within the Cementir Holding group and a global leader in white cement, faced compounding pressures from tightening international sustainability legislation and sharply rising energy prices. Producing ten distinct cement formulations across two mills, the plant relied on cascade PID controllers fed by lab samples taken every two hours — a window too wide for a process with this many interdependent variables. Deviations within that two-hour gap translated directly into energy waste and product variability, undermining both CCB's cost position and its formal commitment to significant CO2 reduction by 2030.

Rockwell Automation deployed its FactoryTalk Analytics PavilionX Model Predictive Control (MPC) platform across two cement mills — a standard ball mill and a roller press/ball mill circuit. The implementation closed the loop between a newly installed real-time digital fineness analyzer and process controls, replacing the two-hour lab-sample feedback cycle with continuous, automated adjustments. MPC operates as an intelligence layer above existing automation systems, simultaneously optimizing multiple interdependent process variables — including raw material ratios, grinding parameters, and energy-intensive operating steps — against desired quality targets for each of CCB's ten cement types. Rockwell Automation provided application design, engineering implementation, and ongoing software support, drawing on established cement-industry domain expertise within the Cementir group.

CCB achieved results that roughly doubled its original improvement targets across every key metric:

• Energy consumption: Specific energy consumption (SEC) fell by more than 6%, against an internal target of 3%
• Production rate: Throughput increased by nearly 8.5%, against a 3% target
• Availability: System availability held at 97%, meeting guaranteed uptime commitments

Beyond the headline numbers, the closed-loop MPC reduced product variability across all ten cement grades. Since commissioning, plant management reported no service calls to Rockwell Automation — an indicator of stable, self-managing operation that frees process engineers from manual tuning interventions.

• Complex multi-product processes with many interdependent parameters are prime candidates for MPC; simpler facilities may not see proportional returns.
• Closing the feedback loop with real-time sensors (rather than periodic lab samples) is a prerequisite — MPC is only as good as the data latency it operates on.
• Setting conservative improvement targets is prudent; CCB's 3% targets were exceeded by more than 2× on both energy and throughput.
• MPC implementations in cement have transferred well across geographies — comparable Rockwell deployments in the US achieved 4.8–5.7% throughput gains and 3.5 KWh/ton power reductions.
• Remote deployment is feasible but adds coordination complexity; factoring in that risk during project planning avoids timeline surprises.