Symbiotic Economy: Creating Value through the Power to Connect

Creating a Vital Circle of Conservation and Economic Growth

― Connecting information, organizations, and businesses boost symbiosis.

These days, everything is intricately connected and influences each other—person, organization, object, or bit of information. Being connected is vital to co-creative activities, which are more highly valued now than ever. A prime example is the industrial symbiotic economy: a framework for supporting entrepreneurial undertakings and attaining economic growth while reducing environmental burdens. In such an economy, multiple companies and businesses from any industry sustainably orchestrate their business activities by coexisting via mutual utilization of each other‘s assets. Unlike companies and institutions working individually, the symbiotic approach can be a formidable means to transform society by reducing industrial environmental impact.

Technology plays a key role in an industrial symbiotic economy by ensuring that resources are fully utilized. It also can help minimize industrial waste or convert unused or discarded resources from one business into valuable resources for another. Once businesses and organizations realize they can mutually benefit by using each other‘s assets sustainably, they can create a system to optimize the use of water, energy, and waste in a way that reduces the environmental burden. And when their industrial processes eventually become autonomous, the door opens for an ideal economy wherein human intervention is minimized and maximum efficiency achieved without breaching any planetary boundary.

To enable such a beneficent circle, it is essential to bring disparate systems together without compromising their autonomy in operations and management and to coordinate their processes to achieve goals otherwise unattainable. That is where the ability to “connect”—one of Yokogawa‘s core competencies—comes into play. The company defines its purpose as follows: “Utilizing our ability to measure and connect, we fulfill our responsibilities for the future of our planet.” In line with this spirit, Yokogawa connects diverse sets of information, people, organizations, and companies to create new value and help build an industrial symbiotic economy.

Value Creation through Solid Connection

― Quantifying hidden quality issues and optimizing manufacturing with a connected supply chain

Let‘s look at a primary example of how Yokogawa successfully creates value by solidifying connections between businesses. Here we have a manufacturer and a supplier working together to stabilize product quality, leading to reduction of material waste and higher productivity through supply chain optimization.

This Japanese manufacturer (Company A) suspected that the reason for the poor yield was the material quality. However, tests of materials on delivery showed no irregularity. Baffled, Company A decided to implement the Quality Stabilization System of Yokogawa. The system allowed Company A to analyze its processes and identify segments most likely to be affected by quality issues in the materials—if any—which led to a hypothesis about a heretofore unseen issue in materials production by its supplier, Company B. The two companies discussed this hypothesis and jointly worked out a countermeasure, which resulted in improved quality of Company B‘s materials and higher yields for Company A. Yokogawa‘s solution successfully identified and quantified the hidden quality issues, thereby reducing the waste of labor and resources at both firms and leading to optimal manufacturing such as lowering the environmental burden throughout the supply chain.

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Yet another example involves Japan‘s first demonstration experiment, held in 2013, for a smart community project at an industrial park. Led by F-Grid Ohira, Miyagi Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), the project used Yokogawa‘s community energy management system (CEMS) to interconnect the factories within the industrial park, optimizing the balance between locally generated power/heat and the purchase of power from the utility grid to achieve a 20% reduction in energy cost.

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Yokogawa also participates in demonstration experiments involving a virtual power plant (VPP). The VPP system bundles diverse power resources held by factories and households, acting like a physically integrated power plant that centrally controls the supply and demand of energy through advanced remote management technology. In one instance, Yokogawa built a resource aggregator system to enable integrated remote control of pumps at several water purification plants in Japan‘s Shiga Prefecture, maintaining a stable water supply while improving response to the fluctuating energy demand.

Yukihiro Funyu - Senior Vice President & CIO & Head of Digital Strategy HQ.

Seita Hagihara - Regional Chief Executive for Europe, Russia, and CIS of Yokogawa Electric Corporation, President of Yokogawa Europe B.V.

Koichi Nakajima - President & CEO - Yokogawa Electric Ltd.

Terry Marrinan - Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer, 'Precision Maker' at Yokogawa Test & Measurement Corporation.

Kevin McMillen - Chief Executive, Global Vice President.

Thomas Quinlan - Vice President, Products Business Unit at Yokogawa Corporation of America.

Hidetomo Imamura - Director, EVP Yokogawa Engineering Asia.

Mai Hagimoto - Director of Life Science Business, Yokogawa Corporation of America.

Karen Murray - Director, Global DE&I and Organizational Effectiveness at Yokogawa Electric Corporation.

Carl Ramsden - Managing Director at Yokogawa UK Ltd, European Collaboration Officer, Yokogawa Europe BV.

Niels Koek - Director at Yokogawa Europe B.V.

Montserrat Grima Moscardó - Managing Director Yokogawa Iberia S.A.

Han Huang - CFO Yokogawa Europe .

Masahiro Hirase - General Manager Marketing Yokogawa Electric Corporation