Kurita And Fracta Leap Build Global Data Integration Infrastructure For Group's Water Treatment Chemicals And Facilities

To Create Social Value Solutions for Water Savings and GHG Emissions Reduction

Kurita Water Industries Ltd. (Head Office: Nakano-ku, Tokyo; President: Hirohiko Ejiri; hereinafter "Kurita") and Fracta Leap Inc. (Head Office: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; CEO: Yasuhiro Kitabayashi; hereinafter "Fracta Leap",) which specializes in digital technology for water treatment, have jointly built a common global data integration infrastructure (hereinafter "the Data Infrastructure") to provide new solutions to customers worldwide. By centralizing the collection, accumulation, and utilization of data from Kurita Group’s water treatment facilities such as operation data, chemical dosing data and water quality data, new solutions to provide water savings, reduce GHG (GreenHouse Gas) emissions and resource recycling will be created.

In 2020, Kurita established the Digital Strategy Division to transform its operations by utilizing digital technology and accelerate the development of solutions using AI and IoT (Internet of Things). Concurrently in the same year, Kurita and Fracta Leap have been jointly working on the "Meta-Aqua Project", which is aiming for more efficient and advanced design, production, and operation management of water treatment facilities using digital technology.

However, data collected presently by remote monitoring services for chemical dosing and facility operation are managed and operated by different individual systems based on the product and services rendered for each item, making it difficult to share and analyze the data across the different systems. Therefore, it took a lot of time to develop applications using data and functions from multiple sources to create new solutions.

To solve the current issues, all data currently collected from chemical dosing and facility operation in the Kurita Group will be consolidated into the Data Infrastructure, making it possible to leverage the data into cross-functional systems. The Data Infrastructure has been developed using Snowflake, a data cloud service with the flexibility to scale up large-scale data services while ensuring data security and governance is maintained, ensuring the capability for rapid global data collaborations. In addition to the creation of the Data Infrastructure, a product development system utilizing agile methodology was established to promptly create individual applications tailored to the needs of the customers and the solutions required.

Utilizing the Data Infrastructure and digital technology, the Kurita Group will help customers reduce the running costs and labor required to run their facilities while contributing to realizing a sustainable society by creating and delivering solutions that save water, reduce GHG emissions and recycle resources.