Nexans in collaboration with RISE and Chalmers at the Maintenance Fair in Göteborg

Nexans’ development work together with RISE and Chalmers, has been ongoing for many years—essentially since 2021—through various sub‑projects and is financed by Vinnova. The idea is that the tools being developed should be possible for many other companies to use in order to accelerate the digitalization of Swedish industry.
Perparim Sylejmani attended the Maintenance Fair in Gothenburg together with Wilhelm Söderkvist Vermelin from RISE and Mohan Rajashekarappa, PhD candidate at Chalmers, who have both helped Nexans develop a tool, SIFT, for production staff, primarily operators.

SIFT is a search engine for process data, enabling operators to identify optimal conditions for running a specific production order, use historical data to solve problems, or train new staff in how to run a product in the best possible way.
Soon—starting in mid‑March—the tool will be introduced to a pilot group at Nexans.

- It’s a bit nerve‑racking. It’s one thing to be a researcher sitting in your office and another to see your work at use out in the real world, says Mohan Rajashekarappa, PhD candidate at Chalmers.

- Yes, it’s nerve‑racking, but our operators have been involved throughout the entire journey and have contributed valuable, continuous input, says Perparim.

As with all new tools, it will take time to learn how to use it properly. But RISE, Chalmers, and Perparim will all be available to support analysis and explain how the tool is intended to be used.
- We hope that, over time, the operators will shape the tool and not the other way around. We are fully open to their feedback, says Wilhelm.

But it’s not only operators who can benefit from SIFT. Process engineers can use it for quality control, maintenance planning, and data‑driven process optimization. The management team can easily identify trends in quality analysis, production efficiency, and opportunities for resource optimization.

Nexans, RISE, and Chalmers have learned several things from their multi‑year collaboration. Here are some high-lights.

• Merge data immediately — analyzing a single data source in isolation does not get you far, and the risk of starting over is high.
• Data quality is crucial — “Garbage in, garbage out.”
• Data‑driven maintenance is just as much an organizational transformation as it is a digital transformation.

- This is a new way of working. It is very clear that this isn’t only about tools or reading data correctly. We need to find a completely new way of organizing the operation, especially between departments. We will bring together supervisors, team leaders, operators, production engineering, quality, planning, and maintenance to jointly develop forums and working methods for how we will use SIFT, says Perparim.

Today, SIFT is a tool that quickly and efficiently visualizes and analyzes process data. But Nexans, RISE, and Chalmers have jointly applied for funding for an additional collaboration in the continuation project PRONTO. The aim is to review the program’s user‑friendliness and include a ChatGPT‑based Large Language Model built on our own process data so that operator analysis can be carried out faster and more smoothly.

One of the people who attended the presentation on Nexans’ digital transformation in Göteborg was Peter Örtlund from Wellspect Healthcare.