Nominee
SmartMix
Category
Innovative Product or Service
Description
Giatec® introduced SmartMix™ at NRMCA's ConcreteWorks 2022 as the latest update in concrete innovations from their lab. The SmartMix software operates as a mix management, automated mix analytics, and reporting software, enabling concrete producers to optimize their concrete mixes in real time to reduce cement usage, mix costs, and carbon footprints.
With SmartMix, producers can adjust the proportions of their concrete mixes, reducing cement usage, and optimizing mix performance. This software offers plug-n-play management and automated reporting, allowing teams full visibility into mix proportions, quality control, and material supply.
SmartMix inspects concrete mixture proportions, material characteristics, ambient conditions, and more, to assess a mix’s performance over time to reduce mix costs by up to 20%. The software also analyzes and evaluates the influence of mix adjustments in real time to reduce cement usage and the resulting carbon footprint. With integrated data and real–time optimization, SmartMix additionally produces instant reporting for better quality control to limit overperformance, underperformance, and overdesigning.
The Giatec team spent three years working on the development of SmartMix with the intention of strengthening the connection between concrete producers and jobsites through mix analytics and real-time data.
Evidence
Every year, 20 billion tons (10 billion cubic yards) of concrete are produced globally. This translates to approximately 2 billion tons of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions or 8% of the global CO2 pollution. Ready-mix concrete producers design concrete mixes based on limited data and visibility into the quality variations of raw materials and external factors. This leads to overdesigning concrete mixtures by adding excess cement to prevent potential performance issues.
Using Giatec's proprietary AI algorithm created for concrete testing, and SmartMix, concrete producers can optimize concrete mixtures, reduce cement usage, predict concrete properties, and proactively detect anomalies in concrete performance and testing. This will allow for a reduction in CO2 emissions and mix costs by up to 20%.
Upon its launch, SmartMix demonstrated its success with an inaugural case study. Angelle materials were first onboarded on SmartMix and within a matter of minutes began seeing all mix tickets in real time. SmartMix analytics suggested significant cost reduction potential on a variety of commonly used mixes. Angelle identified one of their common-use 4000 psi mixes displaying significant cost savings. With 7-day breaks confirming 75% strength was achieved, SmartMix was a success. The AI-generated mix achieved the desired targets while resulting in a 13% decrease in overall costs and 27% less cement usage. In addition, there was an estimated 24% reduction in CO2. Angelle has only begun using SmartMix but foresees reducing an average of 10% from their total concrete cost which will result in higher margins as well as a new competitive advantage.
SmartMix was built with the expertise of Giatec’s AI Council made up of organizations like Heidelberg Materials, Angelle Materials, Burno, Bard, Tomlinson, Summit Materials, and more as well as partnered with MARCOTTE Systems to introduce an instant integration to the industry. With the brightest coming together to launch the next level in AI-powered mix management, Giatec is pushing the concrete industry one step closer to their net zero vision. SmartMix is already effectively assisting concrete producers and jobsites to reduce their carbon footprints and is on a path to successfully lower GHG emissions resulting from concrete production by 400 million tons annually, the equivalent of taking 110 million cars off the road.
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