Eschbach AI Team Garner's Connected Plant 2023 Game Changer Award

Boston, MA - June 26, 2023 - Global software developer eschbach, the provider of Shiftconnector^® enterprise software platform for process manufacturing, announces that its AI development team was awarded a 2023 Game Changer Award for its new Shiftconnector Smart Search functionality. The eschbach team was recognized last evening by the editors of Chemical Engineering and POWER magazines at their annual Connected Plant Conference in New Orleans.

According to Connected Plant officials, the Game Changer awards highlight organizations which have contributed to innovation, solved problems, or have made extraordinary contributions to the industry using digitalization solutions.

"Truly a team effort, this project demonstrates the value of bringing customers into the design process from the onset to help drive and ensure satisfactory outcomes," said eschbach CEO and Founder Andreas Eschbach. "With close to 20 years in creating solutions for the process industry and more than 65,000 users, we understand the process industry pain points and welcome input from our users to provide solutions that will help them win in an increasingly competitive environment," he added.

Designed for process manufacturers, the development of the Shiftconnector Smart Search feature began five years ago, using AI-based natural language processing. Its tailored lexicon was created based on the terminology used every day by plant operators in the process industry. The new Smart Search feature has shown significantly improved plant performance by quickly finding solutions based on documented legacy knowledge from plant operations teams.

"Capturing and managing knowledge is domain specific, which is why our Shiftconnector Smart Search is specifically designed with our customers in mind," said Eschbach.

The eschbach AI team, led by Dr. Christian Matt, worked closely with one of its major customers to conceptualize and design a search function that could easily find relevant answers based on its plant operations. The team also collaborated with Prof. Dr. Bela Gipp and Anastasia Zhukova of Göttingen University (Germany), who contributed with their state-of-the-art research in the field of natural language processing. The project was supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) based on a decision by the German Bundestag.

"The challenge for our customers was not only to gain more insight into the information collected on the plant floor but also to preserve that knowledge to recover from disruptions faster and to support workforce changes," said Veit Hora, eschbach Chief Operations Officer. "As we move forward into Industry 5.0 where the human element is in the forefront of its relationship to machine operations, using AI is a leap forward in gaining the information necessary to drive process efficiency, mitigate risk, and ensure regulatory compliance."