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Schneider Electric: Partnership is key for the green transformation

You cannot change the world alone. Read how Norwegian industry should prepare for a future that requires increased sustainability, efficiency and resilience in a pressured international market.

Efforts to improve sustainability, efficiency and agility have been underway for some years now. To date many industrial companies have focused on facility energy efficiency projects and many have achieved great results. However, today’s need is to address the process where most industrial energy is consumed, and investment capital is spent. 

In Norway, the need for energy is very high in several sectors, such as the metal industry. One big smelting plant consumes as much electricity as the entire capital of Norway. Also in the most modern land-based fish farming systems, a lot of electricity is used to activate the pumps that keep the water in motion in the rearing tanks.

And that's where Schneider Electric's global network of Alliance Partners comes in. Our system integrators and distributors understand the use and supply needs of the industry and site-specific needs better than anyone else.

- To ensure that this network of Alliance Partners knows how to get the most out of automation, we have developed several industrial product and application certifications. These ensure that our customers have access to a pool of certified, qualified partners who can assist with their digital transformation journeys, Ødegaard points out.

As a basis, we have designed solutions and reference architectures to meet the general requirements of the industries, shorten time-to-market and optimize system performance. Building a system that completely matches the needs of each individual customer facility, requires detailed knowledge, which our partners possess.

Creating added value for customers

To make it easier for customers to choose the right partner, we also approve and classify distributors, system integrators and other partners according to product knowledge, service level, application and industry knowledge. For example, Guard Automation, Bekas and Goodtech, Schneider Electric Alliance Partners, have good teams of sales and technical experts with a history of serving machine builders and industrial end-users. We collaborate a lot with them in several fields, including aquaculture, the food industry in general and water & wastewater.

Global, but with a strong local presence

- It is important for us to be as close as possible to the market, as well as we benefit from our own expert teams who gain knowledge from their work at facilities around the world. Local partnership agreements, combined with our global experience, is the core of Schneider Electric's strategy, says Ødegaard.

- In aquaculture, for example, Schneider Electric has developed a very close collaboration with both alliance partners and selected process companies that deliver innovative solutions for fish-farming: among these are the supplier of modular RAS (recirculating aquaculture systems) plants Nofitech in Trondheim and Pure Salmon Kaldnes in Sandefjord, the fish sludge treatment company Blue Ocean Technology, as well as two innovative players that offer various solutions for closed facilities in the sea, such as Ecomerden and Hauge Aqua. Together with our system integrators, they develop highly efficient, digitized facilities for sustainable fish production and reuse of fish sludge.

The need of agility, energy and resource efficiency, workforce empowerment and – above all – the need of sustainability are among the biggest challenges of modern aquaculture. These challenges must all be addressed while fish-farmers try to reach their traditional goals: sales increase, profitability and return on investment. This is where the hard work begins.

- We see many common features between general applications and applications in specific industries, and it helps. But companies and individual plants, processes and people are different. It requires a high level of proximity to the plant itself to make the digital transformation happen correctly, says Yngvar Ødegaard, VP Industrial Automation at Schneider Electric Norway.

You can’t change the world alone

- When it comes to system integration in industrial environments, no organization can reach sufficiently advanced results alone. The people you know, and the resources you have access to via your partner ecosystem, is what is most important to differentiate yourself from the competition, says Ødegaard.

- Our diverse, highly specialized network of certified partners is key in helping end-customers implement the green transition and achieve both sustainability and business goals. We have developed certification programs for our Alliance Partners to qualify their expertise and skills so that customers can be confident that they are working with someone who can best support their individual, digital transformation journeys.