BASF Advances Sustainable Agriculture with Dotmatics R&D Workflows
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- Europe
Country
- Germany
Product
- Dotmatics Vortex
- Dotmatics Browser
- Dotmatics Studies Notebook
- Quriosity
Tech Stack
- Data Analysis
- Data Aggregation
- Data Capture
- Machine Learning
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Innovation Output
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Big Data Analytics
- Analytics & Modeling - Machine Learning
Applicable Industries
- Agriculture
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- Data Science Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
About The Customer
BASF is a leading chemical company that combines economic success with environmental protection and social responsibility. The company has more than 118,000 employees in the BASF Group who actively contribute to the success of customers in nearly all sectors and almost every country. BASF’s portfolio is divided into six segments: Chemicals, Materials, Industrial Solutions, Surface Technologies, Nutrition & Care and Agricultural Solutions. The company has identified several strategic action areas including Innovation and Digitalization, which are of utmost importance for BASF’s Agricultural Solutions division. Using digital technologies and data, BASF creates additional value for customers and increases the efficiency and effectiveness of its processes. The company provides customers access to important information in real time using new digital services. The integrated use of internal and external data strengthens BASF’s innovation power.
The Challenge
BASF's Agricultural Solutions division was facing challenges with handling increasingly complex and comprehensive data in R&D for new crop protection products. The division had a strong mandate for continuous innovation and digitalization and sought to optimize workflows involved in the design cycle. The digitalization team invested time mapping and analyzing their R&D digital workflow to understand who generates and who uses the data. They established the requirements for a system to support both data capture and its subsequent application to decision making.
The Solution
BASF Agricultural Solutions worked with Dotmatics to enhance the division’s R&D IT infrastructure. With a 3-step phased approach, BASF Agricultural Solutions successfully reached the goals of the ‘Data to Value’ project. As a result, all steps of the data lifecycle – experiment planning, sample creation, testing, and scientific analysis – are handled by Dotmatics’ unified data-centric platform. The first project involved making Dotmatics Vortex the default R&D data analytics tool. The second project introduced Dotmatics Browser as a client on the data warehouse. The third project initiated a new ELN, which is based on Dotmatics Studies Notebook.
Operational Impact
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Intelligent Farming with ThingWorx Analytics
Z Farms was facing three challenges: costly irrigation systems with water as a limited resource, narrow optimal ranges of soil moisture for growth with difficult maintenance and farm operators could not simply turn on irrigation systems like a faucet.
Case Study
Greenhouse Intelligent Monitoring and Control Solution
Farming Orchids is the most successful form of precision farming in Taiwan, and also the most exported flower. Orchids need a specific temperature and humidity conditions to grow and bloom, and its flowering time may not be in line with market demands, so the price collapses when there is overproduction. Therefore, some farmers began to import automated greenhouse control systems for breeding and forcing, which not only improves quality, but also effectively controls the production period and yield to ensure revenue. In 2012, an orchid farmer built a Forcing Greenhouse of about 200 pings (approximately 661 Square Meters) in Tainan, Taiwan. The system integrator adopted Advantech’s APAX-5000 series programmable automation controllers to build the control platform, coupled with Advantech WebAccess HMI/SCADA software, to achieve cloud monitoring. The staff of the orchid field can monitor important data anytime via smart phone, iPad, and other handheld devices, and control the growth and flowering conditions. System requirements: In the past, most environmental control systems of orchid greenhouses in Taiwan used PLCs (Programmable Logic Controller) with poorscalability and control, and could not be connected to the Internet formonitoring from the cloud. For advanced database analysis and networking capability, the PC platform must be adopted. Therefore, PAC Systems (Programmable Automation Controller) with both PLC programming capabilities andPC functions is a better choice.The environmental control of the Orchid greenhouse switches on and off devices like fan, shade net, cooling/heat pump, liquid flow control, water-cooling wall etc. It is controlled by a control panel of electric controllers, and is driven by a motor, to adjust the greenhouse temperature, humidity, and other environmental conditions to the set parameters.
Case Study
Enabling Internet of Things Innovation in Agriculture
DigiBale, wanted to apply technology know-how and IP from implementations successfully to more agriculture sectors including cotton, forestry, sugarcane and cattle. However, farmers and growers still have worries about the connected technology.
Case Study
Precision beekeeping with wireless temperature monitoring
Honeybees are insects of large economic value and provide a vital service to agriculture by pollinating a variety of crops. In addition, bees provide us with valuable products such as honey, beeswax, propolis, bee venom, etc. Monitoring of honeybee colony health, population, productivity, and environmental conditions affecting the colony health have always been exceedingly difficult tasks in apiculture. Research has shown that even small deviations (by more than 2°C) from the optimal temperatures have a significant influence on the development of the brood and the health of adult bees.