How to get started on Cloud-based solutions

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Maybe you have heard about cloud and HPC modeling and simulation – maybe you haven’t? Nevertheless, in this article it will be presented how others transformed their businesses with the use of cloud and HPC-based solutions. Hopefully it will inspire you to do the same and maybe you will even take the leap to apply for the open call for financial and technological support through the initiative CloudiFacturing.

How cloud-based solution helped the beer production and delivery
Many of the 15,000 craft breweries in Europa are in remote areas in order to be close to the production of the ingredients needed to create beer. For all these breweries goes that one of their main challenges is to ensure that their products are consumed in an optimum time window when the beer is neither too young nor too old. Consequently, a quality cask needs to be intelligently allocated to clients individually, so the casks are opened and consumed at the beer’s ideal age for consumption – a difficult task of planning production and delivery which is done more or less manually.

This challenge of quality optimization can be overcome by powerful process simulation software, but software developing skills are often absent in the small breweries. Therefore, it was necessary to make the simulation software accessible in the cloud to ensure it could be used from everywhere.
In collaboration with a Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) this was made possible. The low-cost, cloud-based process simulation solution lead to great savings from reduced waste and energy consumption, alongside more efficient cask utilization and transportation.

The creation of new drugs
The journey for a drug from invention to market is a long one. It has been estimated that the time required to develop a new drug ranges between 10 and 17 years – if it ever makes it.

The rising costs of developing drugs and the high risk of failure are threatening to make the development of new drugs increasingly unaffordable for both companies and patients. However, repositioning existing drugs for new diseases could deliver the productivity increase which the industry needs. One of the most prominent cases in this regard was when a drug for high blood pressure was repositioned to become VIAGRA. While this was a discovery by accident, reconfiguring existing drugs to target new diseases can be done in a structured and targeted manner. Nevertheless, this requires enormous computing resources (supercomputers) to simulate different molecule compositions.

The typical analysis of one drug reconfiguration would take 70 CPU years on a powerful workstation. However, in a FORTISSIMO experiment the use of an HPC-Cloud infrastructure was combined with algorithmic improvements and a new more efficient use of memory. This resulted in a significant reduction in the time from 70 CPU years to only 3 months. Resulting in tremendous cost savings in the development of new reconfigured drugs.

Read more about the cases and other related stories here: Digital-Innovation-Hubs.pdf

And find a nearby Digital Innovation Hub related to HPC here.

Get started on cloud/HPC modeling and simulation in your company
Cloud/HPC modeling and simulation creates a huge potential for manufacturing companies, enabling them to differentiate themselves in the market and in the competitive field. However, the task can be hard to grasp on your own and therefore, CloudiFactoring is here to help you.

CloudiFacturing is an EU-funded initiative under the umbrella of I4MS. CloudiFacturing aims at helping manufacturing SMEs to optimize production processes and productivity using cloud/HPC-based modeling and simulation, leveraging online factory data and advanced data analytics. Thus, CloudiFacturing is contributing to the competitiveness and resource efficiency of the companies involved. The cloud and HPC based solutions from the above-mentioned cases is just examples on how these technologies can be utilized and how they create new opportunities – all for your inspiration.

If this funding opportunity awakens your curiosity or you have a potential project in mind, you can learn more about the initiative and submit your application on CloudiFacturings website. This open call is closing for applications on the 30th of September.

Jane Hagelskjær

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