Masen, a newly formed Koch capability, is transforming the way facilities gather environmental data.
Collecting environmental data at industrial facilities is not always easy. The environmental engineers and technicians involved often describe the work and data collection process as manual, time-consuming and unfulfilling. This can result in low job satisfaction, high turnover and limited data visibility that puts facilities at a disadvantage.
Masen is a newly formed capability within Koch that focuses on transforming the way facilities gather and manage environmental data by designing and implementing digital solutions to collect and analyze environmental data. This can lead to improved operational efficiency.
“Environmental engineers are highly trained, highly skilled individuals who are in key leadership roles across Koch,” says Eric Peterson, director of Masen. “Manually collecting environmental data does not equip them with the data they need to help their facilities make critical business decisions in a timely manner. This often leads to increased risks and comes with high opportunity costs.”
Engineers at the Georgia-Pacific integrated paper mill in Palatka, Florida, gather a lot of their environmental data manually. They recognized the opportunity to transform the way they do work through collaborating with Masen to find ways to enhance their data collection.
Matt Fry is an environmental engineer and is responsible for all things water at the mill. He says gathering water samples from stormwater outfall locations, places where stormwater runoff exits the facility, is particularly challenging. That’s because the stormwater outfalls need to be sampled within 30 minutes of a discharge event, and the outfalls are spread across more than 1,500 acres.
“I might be gone for two hours just going from outfall to outfall waiting for it to discharge,” Matt says. “It’s a tremendous demand of my time.”
Thanks to the innovative solutions Masen provided, Matt and his technicians will no longer have to do that. Together, they formulated a plan to install monitors at the stormwater outfalls that will allow the on-site environmental team to monitor them remotely and constantly, along with site-specific weather data. When it rains, instead of having to check each specific outfall visually, Matt can get an email alert telling him exactly which stormwater outfall is about to begin discharging and will need to be manually sampled. This will allow him to spend more time on higher value-added tasks and be proactive rather than reactive.
“Anytime that we have better data, we can make better decisions,” he says.
Masen originated from an internal capability that assisted Koch companies in solving their biggest issues and filling in the gaps where solutions didn’t already exist in the marketplace.
Masen’s director, Eric Peterson, says there were plenty of companies selling sensors and monitoring devices and the software solutions to combine with them, but nobody had really figured out a comprehensive customer-centered solution. That is the gap Eric and his team have set out to fill.
Masen’s goal is to be a solutions provider. Because it isn’t a device manufacturer, it is not focused on pushing a specific product or application to a facility. Instead, Eric says people like Jacob Vigh, commercial operations manager, work with each environmental leader individually to find the right solution to their unique challenges. Jacob was previously an environmental manager at a Georgia-Pacific facility, and uses that personal experience to his advantage.
“Jacob will go out with the environmental teams and look at what their program is and what their needs are and where they’re struggling,” Eric says. “Then, we utilize a human-centered design process to provide them a right-sized solution.”
Masen worked with the Palatka Mill to find solutions to their specific challenges. The nearly real-time data from the monitoring devices will allow the facility to be proactive rather than reactive and improve operational efficiency.
At the Palatka mill, Masen has already installed air monitoring stations, wastewater pond level and pressure sensors, and is working on installing more. Most recently, Masen installed two dissolved oxygen monitors in Palatka’s wastewater treatment system.
“Masen has the right people in the right roles who understand what someone sitting in this chair, running an environmental team, needs in order to be successful,” says Wes Williams, Palatka’s environmental manager. “It’s more of a partnership than anything.”
Wes says integrating the new technology has allowed them to make more data-driven decisions — improving overall operational outcomes. It’s also helping the facility better apply Koch’s Stewardship Framework by enabling more accurate and timely decision making and assisting with compliance with environmental regulations.
Masen has also created a single platform that can integrate devices even if Masen wasn’t the original installer. The single platform turns the massive amounts of newly collected data into a format that is meaningful and actionable for environmental engineers and operators. Wes says it’s so much easier to pull up all the various data points in one location rather than opening a different dashboard for every device the facility has ever installed.
Masen is currently working with 26 Georgia-Pacific facilities to develop unique and transformative solutions for gathering environmental data. Eric, Masen’s director, says he knows the challenges Masen is helping to solve at Georgia-Pacific exist everywhere. He wants environmental leaders across Koch to know there’s a new resource that can help.
“We’ve got a team that has lived with the same challenges that environmental teams face every day at their facilities,” he says. “Our goal is to meet customers where they are and help them transform how environmental data is collected at their facilities to enable them to make better, faster decisions.”
