Tributech Solutions at Microsoft Technology Center Munich

The Tributech DataSpace Kit allows companies to share selected sections of their organization’s data streams with other companies without having to grant them access to their whole system or API. A data contract ensures data governance and sovereignty to enable sharing of know-how and data insights across company boarders. Our trust layer and the embedded blockchain technology ascertain that the data is in a trustworthy, untampered state and reliable along the way from source to consumer. For the showcase at the Microsoft Technology Center we have decided to provide insights into one of our success stories with RHI Magnesita and one of their customers. 

RHI Magnesita and Tributech Solutions showcase

The steel and refractory industry are by nature, energy-intensive businesses where a more optimized production process can achieve a huge positive impact. Both RHI Magnesita and their customer who is part of this exemplarily business case, are long-term business partners and achieved world market leadership in their specific field. Challenges in our rapidly changing world and the constant need for companies to adapt, call for deliberate cross-enterprise perspectives and require closer collaboration and optimization across companies’ boundaries. For this purpose, production data from various sensors (cameras, temperature, ultrasound, vibration, etc.) are collected by RHI Magnesita’s customer where it is further processed and stored in a Microsoft Azure based data platform. Selected production data is then shared with RHIM via the Tributech DataSpace Kit. RHIM uses the received data as input for their digital service called APO, RHI Magnesita’s Predictive Maintenance & Anomaly Detection Service and provide gained insights and recommendations to their customer. These insights help them optimize the maintenance of linings for applications with more than 1200°C and significantly reduce downtimes by optimizing refractory usage. As both, RHI Magnesita and their customer, use the shared data insights as critical input for decision-making and optimization, it is business critical that this shared data is trusted by both parties and not broken between source and application. This is achieved by the Tributech DataSpace Kit which provides an integrated distributed ledger for verifying origin and integrity of data streams right at the data source – even when shared across companies.

Challenges adressed

• Increase willingness to share among stakeholders

Scaling a data service across customers requires the willingness of your customer to share the necessary data.

• Scale across systems & platforms

By having a standardized gateway for the data synchronization you are able to scale across infrastructure, platforms and systems.

• Audit & trust data cross-company

Having a technology which enables this cross-company auditability provides a reliable basis for your data service.

Our showcase at the Microsoft Technology Center Munich covers insights regarding our technology for sharing audit-proof data between customers and service providers for RHI Magnesita’s predictive maintenance application. This is one of many examples how Microsoft and their ever-growing partner ecosystem help us and other startups extending our global reach and providing us with important relations to potential partners and customers. Find out more about Microsoft Technology Centers.

About RHI Magnesita GmbH

RHI Magnesita GmbH is a global leading supplier of refractory products, systems and services. In 2017, RHI Magnesita underwent a huge merger, doubled its size and obtained big attention and visibility by media and the industry. The company mines, produces, and supplies refractory products for industrial high-temperature processes in the steel, non-ferrous, cement, and glass industries. RHI Magnesita’s core business comprises the production, sale and installation of ceramic refractory products, the development and implementation of customized system solutions as well as rendering services for the key industries like steel, cement, lime, nonferrous metals, paper and pulp, glass and environment-energy-chemicals. The company’s revenue in 2020 was EUR 2.3 billion, with more than 12.000 employees worldwide.