Bilfinger to become a DFKI shareholder

Bil­fin­ger, through its sub­sidiary Bil­fin­ger Dig­i­tal Next, is join­ing the group of share­hold­ers of the Ger­man Research Cen­ter for Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (DFKI). The DFKI is an indus­try-focused research insti­tute in the field of inno­v­a­tive soft­ware tech­nolo­gies incor­po­rat­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and is con­sid­ered one of the most impor­tant “Cen­ters of Excel­lence” in the inter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty. The pur­pose of the stake is to devel­op inno­v­a­tive solu­tions based on AI for the process indus­try. Bil­fin­ger is the first indus­tri­al ser­vices provider in the DFKI share­hold­er group, which also includes com­pa­nies like Google, Microsoft and SAP. Franz Braun, CEO of Bil­fin­ger Dig­i­tal Next: “Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence tech­nolo­gies give com­pa­nies in the process indus­try ground­break­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties to man­age and main­tain their plants with a greater degree of effi­cien­cy and effec­tive­ness. Plant oper­a­tors can gen­er­ate sub­stan­tial com­pet­i­tive advan­tages using AI. We want to demon­strate these pos­si­bil­i­ties to our cus­tomers and sup­port them with future-ori­ent­ed solu­tions based on the broad range of advan­tages deliv­ered by arti­fi­cial intelligence”.

Prof. Dr. Anto­nio Krüger, CEO and Chair­man of the DFKI Man­age­ment Board: “We are pleased to be tak­ing the next step towards a last­ing part­ner­ship on the basis of the suc­cess we have enjoyed in our joint project work to date. Bil­fin­ger’s com­mit­ment attests to our coop­er­a­tion and under­scores the indus­tri­al rel­e­vance of the work DFKI researchers are doing. DFK­I’s cir­cle of share­hold­ers will be strength­ened by the addi­tion of an ambi­tious indus­tri­al ser­vices provider, with whom we plan to con­tin­ue imple­ment­ing the results of AI research into prod­ucts and solu­tions for the process industry”.

Bil­fin­ger has been col­lab­o­rat­ing suc­cess­ful­ly with the DFKI for some time on the devel­op­ment of dig­i­tal solu­tions for the process indus­try. Joint devel­op­ments that have been launched on the mar­ket include PID­Graph, a soft­ware for the dig­i­tal­iza­tion of plant doc­u­men­ta­tion. Through the appli­ca­tion of AI meth­ods, the soft­ware is able to dig­i­tal­ize pip­ing and instru­ment flow dia­grams (P&I dia­grams) that are only avail­able in paper or PDF for­mats. The sym­bols, texts and lines of the dia­grams are con­vert­ed into a dig­i­tal for­mat with the help of neur­al net­works trained to rec­og­nize pat­terns. The soft­ware records the cor­rec­tions made by the user and thus con­tin­u­ous­ly improves itself. The dig­i­tal for­mats cre­at­ed by PID­Graph can be processed by any mod­ern engi­neer­ing and asset man­age­ment sys­tem, there­by form­ing the basis for cre­at­ing “dig­i­tal twins” of indus­tri­al plants, for exam­ple. The dig­i­tal­iza­tion of P&I dia­grams is not only sig­nif­i­cant­ly cheap­er with PID­Graph, but also much faster than con­ven­tion­al methods.

“The AI algo­rithms rec­og­nize the com­plex ele­ments in the plant dia­grams, ana­lyze them, assign them seman­ti­cal­ly, mak­ing them read­able for the com­put­er. PID­Graph shows how mature AI meth­ods can com­pre­hend com­plex cor­po­rate knowl­edge and make it avail­able for dig­i­tal use,” says Prof. Dr. Andreas Den­gel, who start­ed the coop­er­a­tion with Bil­fin­ger and leads the research area Smart Data & Knowl­edge Ser­vices at the DFKI.