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The vision of ICL’s Operational Innovation team is to lead ICL to breakthroughs in operational performance and improved business results, based on introducing innovative technologies and a culture of innovation. ICL is focused on a physical transformation via robotics, drones and wearable technology, a digital transformation to optimize process performance based on machine learning implementation, and on developing the employees of the future through innovative training.
Drones and autonomous robotics used at ICL sites are equipped with sensitive and smart sensors that monitor activities from the field and above, avoiding employees working in dangerous environments and enabling the execution of operational routines quickly and accurately.
This goes hand-in-hand with ICL’s strategy of top-tier safety performance and environmental responsibility. With regards to safety, ICL has fostered a strong safety culture and enhanced awareness, achieving top quartile safety performance scores within our respective industries. As for environmental responsibility, the Company operates with a clear commitment to full environmental compliance and beyond, which also proactively ensures ICL’s Right to Operate.
Drones have become an effective tool to undertake assignments that could be dangerous when undertaken by people, as well as save time and money and provide a wide range view to monitor the health/resilience of production lines. ICL’s sites in Israel, in collaboration with ICL’s Operational Innovation unit, implemented autonomous drones systems.. The drones’ ability to easily and accurately access locations, over great distances and heights, also neutralizes challenging land conditions. Drones can easily and quickly fly over unpaved roads, water obstacles, and uneven terrain.
At ICL sites, drones are expected to be leveraged in diverse ways, including inspection of high-voltage networks, monitoring equipment, security, ecology and safety. Drones carry equipment, such as cameras and sensors of various kinds, including video cameras, infrared night-sight cameras and various inspection tools (like specific chemical detection tools). In the future they will also deliver light cargo.
Drones are now entering full service at ICL Dead Sea and ICL Rotem sites. ICL’s Innovation team is already looking into additional ways to use drones in ICL operations, to minimize risks and save time and money. Examples include using drones for maintenance inspections in hard-to-reach and/or hazardous areas, using autonomous drones/vehicles to deliver parts and samples to labs and operating autonomous robots to perform field inspection routines.
ICL views wearable technology, combined with virtual reality (VR) capabilities, as an opportunity to access and improve the flow of information in operational, maintenance and safety routines. The technology can help field operators connect to control rooms, provide support remotely, assist in a VR way with training activities, and enable hands-free technology. Part of the implementation focuses on safety training virtually, simulating events and training employees on correct responses.
Over the past year, as part of the Lighthouse Workshop transformation methodology, ICL began developing smart workstations that enable the delivery of visual 3D instructions to maintenance teams. This technology enables sharing best practices and improving maintenance quality.
ICL is implementing Machine Learning models that use “big data” to optimize its production lines’ performance and to identify failures in advance. The outcome is more efficient, safe and robust process control.
Several of ICL’s products and byproducts streams could be used as raw materials for other products or applications, thus promoting a circular economy.
ICL uses data mining as a tool to advance the discovery of potential applications and has already enjoyed breakthrough results for new uses of its byproducts. The main concept is to perform data mining on a huge amount of articles and patents in order to identify equivalent materials having the same characters and to identify uses for these materials.
ICL is implementing Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) methodologies to increase the Company’s efficiency and to find solutions by utilizing the knowledge and experience of employees, combined with creative thinking techniques.
The use of SIT promotes cross-learning, creativity, in-depth analysis and methodical investigation. SIT is being used to solve operational, safety and ecology related challenges.
