Basic Materials & Utilities
Your process runs continuously. Your production data should be just as available.
UMH connects your kilns, furnaces, and mills into one real-time data layer. Your production, energy management, and process engineering teams get the same trusted view of every unit, every shift, every site.
Machine-level energy monitoring for EU ETS, CBAM, and ISO 50001 compliance
OT-safe, outbound-only architecture under IEC 62443 and KRITIS requirements
Real-time energy-per-tonne and carbon intensity reporting per process and grade
Siemens S7, EtherNet/IP, OPC UA, Modbus. Live in under 2 weeks
Template-based multi-site rollout with production data flowing into SAP or your ERP
Trusted by global enterprises
The Challenge
Continuous process, disconnected data.
Process data sits inside isolated OT systems, out of reach for compliance, efficiency, and portfolio decisions.
Carbon is now a direct production cost, and it's rising every year
For steel, cement, and glass, carbon is not an indirect cost. EU ETS and CBAM put a direct price on every tonne of CO2 your process emits, and free allocations are shrinking every year. Unlike other industries, a large share of emissions in basic materials comes from the chemical reactions of the process itself, not just energy consumption. You cannot eliminate them by switching to renewable electricity alone. Carbon cost hits the P&L. Specific energy consumption per tonne is the lever production actually controls. Both require the same thing: machine-level energy and emissions data tied to production output, in real time.
You've been asked to digitalize a plant that can't stop running
A cement kiln runs continuously for months. A blast furnace doesn't stop for an IT project. The control systems are legacy PLCs and DCS, connected to proprietary historians and isolated SCADA networks that were built for uptime, not connectivity. Every regulation and every improvement initiative depends on accessible production data, but the OT network was designed to keep data in, not let it out. You need a connectivity layer that reads data outbound without touching control systems, works alongside running processes, and deploys without downtime.
Every regulation asks for the same number you can't produce automatically
EU ETS, CBAM, and ISO 50001 all require the same underlying calculation: energy and emissions per tonne of product, by process, by grade. Three separate obligations, one number. The energy meters sit on one network. Production tonnage sits in the MES. Process parameters sit in the DCS. Most plants join them in a spreadsheet, once a month. Every auditor now expects this data continuously, and the gap between what they require and what most plants can produce is getting harder to defend.
Process drift at this scale compounds for shifts before anyone catches it
Raw material variability directly affects thermal efficiency, yield, and energy consumption. A temperature drift on a kiln or pressure shift in a furnace that goes undetected for one shift compounds across the next three. The data to detect it exists in the control systems, but it is not accessible in a form anyone can act on in time. Without real-time process monitoring from live machine data, corrections are reactive. At this scale, every hour of delayed reaction is measured in tonnes of waste and thousands in energy cost.
You can't optimise a portfolio of assets you can't compare
A company running 15 or 20 plants across multiple countries has no unified view of how each site performs. Thermal efficiency is reported differently at every plant. Downtime categories vary by region. Specific energy consumption per tonne depends on local definitions that no one has aligned. Every plant manager knows their own operation, but no one at the operations level can answer which site has the most improvement potential, or where the next capital investment will have the highest return. Without standardised, real-time production data across every site, portfolio-level decisions are based on quarterly reports that arrive too late to act on.
from the floor
Case Study | Böllhoff
See how industrial manufacturers use UMH to connect multi-plant operations and get real-time visibility across every site.
How Böllhoff put 20 million parts daily on a single data foundation
"We produce almost 20 million fasteners per day. That generates enormous amounts of data. Machine data, energy data, production orders. But it was all in separate systems. We had the data. We just couldn't use it."
our solution
One data layer, no downtime.
Outbound-only connectivity reads from running kilns and mills without touching the control layer.
Real-time energy-per-tonne, not a monthly spreadsheet
Join energy meters, production counters, and process parameters in one namespace. Energy and carbon intensity per tonne of product, calculated continuously. The number your auditors require, available in seconds.
Machine-level energy attribution
Monitor electricity, thermal energy, compressed air, and fuel consumption per process unit. Per-unit attribution tells the production team where to reduce and gives the energy manager the indicators they need.
Connect PLCs, DCS, and field devices in one layer
Siemens S7, EtherNet/IP, OPC UA, and Modbus, regardless of age or manufacturer, connected to one unified data layer. No middleware, no per-connector fees. Works alongside running processes without downtime.
Bridge OT to IT without opening the boundary
Outbound-only data flow from OT to IT. No inbound firewall rules. Configurable for DMZ architectures. Production stays protected, data flows out.
Detect process drift before it compounds
Monitor thermal efficiency, pressure curves, and yield indicators in real time across kilns, furnaces, and mills. Alerts fire when parameters drift outside operating bands, before the deviation reaches the next shift.
Template-based multi-site rollout
Configuration templates replicate from site to site. Each subsequent plant deploys faster than the last. OT-safe architecture validated once, applied everywhere.
Results across process sites.
Energy per tonne tracked continuously, process drift caught in minutes, compliance reporting automated.
solutions
Solutions Built on UMH.
UMH is the data infrastructure. These are the outcomes it delivers.
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