Lean R&D: Analytic AI boosts ceramic process and material development
How does AI impact ceramics processes and how does it impact glaze and tile makers today? Find MaterialsZone's answer.
By Warren Green, Alessandro Gozzi, Dr. Assaf Anderson, MaterialsZone (Israel)
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MaterialsZone combines software and service for materials informatics. Data consolidation and AI/ML analysis enable industrial researchers and data scientists accelerate novel materials development by offering insight and forecasts.
The platform and AI algorithms work in most businesses, depending on the input data.
This article answers a common question: “How does AI work for ceramics processes, and how does it apply for ceramic glaze or ceramic tile manufacturers today?”
Definition of AI.
AI inspires innovation and excitement across many industries. Is it a mystery or just another technique to employ powerful computers and data to boost factory and development lab productivity? Like a GPS navigator in our cars, it makes expert suggestions but we make the selections.
Informatics aggregates and processes data to apply Analytic AI to expedite development of new materials or re-formulate old materials for changed qualities. It streamlines R&D, accelerates development, and increases real-time collaboration amongst worldwide enterprise teams. MaterialsZone calls it Lean R&D, which uses analytic AI and ML to develop materials.
Ceramic product invention
New and fast-growing market: materials informatics. This method is best for ceramic tile makers and allied industries including ink, pigment, glaze, engobe or additive formulation, frit smelting, and body compositions. Suppliers of process equipment can mimic fire circumstances. Ceramics production is unique in intricacy. Worldwide, tile producers and glazing lines use different raw materials and process conditions. New tile collections require many formulation adjustments and testing rounds to reach the desired result. Trial-and-error in industrial kilns and glazing lines wastes a lot of time, energy, and resources. Additionally, the quick change to slab manufacturing has raised the requirement for systems to regulate and forecast the behavior of decorated materials (and the entire decoration process) during kiln burning. Glaze and machinery suppliers must support a vast inventory of firing conditions, frits, and glazes for each customer, a massive effort given that there are thousands of tile makers globally.
Get Started
First steps with AI in ceramics? MaterialsZone works with the customer's team without specialists or data scientists. After joining the platform, MaterialsZone assigns a project manager and solutions engineer, a dedicated team that will help the organization find and define use cases and focus and accelerate to meet targets. After understanding, we can develop a framework using existing data (or no data) to better implement the data strategy needed to meet aims. The “digital journey” begins for companies that save data and knowledge in manual notebooks or excel workbooks. Companies who have adopted ELN and/or LIMS can plug into MaterialsZone at any level.
Identify the issue
Current tile industry difficulties include:
Sustainability and regulation compliance (lowering carbon footprint, harmful materials, and procedures).
Raw materials and techniques vary.
Rapid creation of bodies, glazes, and surfaces.
Waste reduction, cost reduction, yield improvement.
Green hydrogen, a sustainability subject in ceramic R&D, requires combustion trial management and information consolidation, which MaterialsZone may help with. It can also optimize glaze and body formulas and overcome local variances by selecting the optimum raw materials and anticipating firing and smelting kiln conditions. Lean R&D's four pillars—Data aggregation, Collaboration hub, Visual Analyzer, and Predictive co-pilot—digitalize the entire R&D process, reducing costs.
MaterialsZone answer
MaterialsZone uses four steps.
Step 1. The organization chooses a use case, an issue, challenge, or project to solve. It may be firing the kiln with green hydrogen mixes, optimizing body compositions or engobes, regulating frit smelting, or anything else that takes iteration. MaterialsZone provides use cases for estimating glaze, body, and frit compositions, sustainability calculations, and internal and external security.
Step 2. Find the use case or project's relevant data. This data will provide insights and be stored securely in the Materials Knowledge Center. As the corporation advances from project to project, its knowledge base will grow and become available to everyone. The R&D endeavor becomes a Collaborative Framework.
In Step 3, the company obtains insight and finds unexpected data trends. The platform's Visual Analyzer accelerates development companywide.
Step 4. After data collection and trials, AI model the procedure. The predictive co-pilot suggests experiments and anticipates results. Any stage can include this step.
Summary
AI can help the ceramic sector innovate, starting small. Tools can streamline R&D and protect business knowledge. The industry has closely controlled bank accounts and money for years, and CRM has recently streamlined the sales process, yet R&D has remained opaque. MaterialsZone can help management recover control of this key phase and boost product development and data scientist productivity and creativity.
Gartner's 2024 Market Guide for Materials Informatics Solutions named MaterialsZone a leader.