Optimize the investment costs of an aluminum smelter by 20% while improving its performance

Established technological leader on aluminium smelters, our customer must re-invent its technology to maintain its lead and ensure its competitiveness, both on greenfield projects as on revampings.

The major objective of the project is to reduce CAPEX by around 20%, but this is accompanied by targets for drastic improvements in the energy and environmental performance of the installations.

Within a complex, multi-regional and multi-cultural organisation, IAC is mandated to define and structure an innovative approach, making it possible to generate disruptive and structural optimisations for our client’s future offer.

A 4-step approach is built and implemented over a total period of 2 years:

• Initialize

A project team is set up, an overall assessment of the situation is made, the objectives and associated metrics are clarified and quantified. 6 angles of attack are defined to address all the cost items of a smelter, from the carbon cycle to the metal cycle.

• Share

The input data are consolidated, the work methodology is explained, the reporting tools and the work plan are set up.

• Imagine

Creativity sessions are led by IAC consultants, around the paradigms to be reversed, combining a structured functional approach with open-innovation tools (marathons, external benchmarks, etc.).

• Validate

The ideas generated are combined to generate global scenarios that can quickly be transferred to projects.

• IAC support enables the process to be carried out successfully, while ensuring cohesion between the different sites. The impetus is reflected in the strong involvement of the teams, resulting in the generation of promising ideas and scenarios.
• This first phase of the project is closed by a plenary session during which the teams are invited to rank the attractiveness in their eyes of the proposed optimization axes, guaranteeing their commitment to the future validation actions to be implemented.