Kafrit Group, a leading global producer of customized masterbatches and compounds for the plastics industry, is implementing a significant technological advancement by partnering with MaterialsZone, a materials informatics platform designed to manage and synchronize raw material and formulation data across the group's global entities. The partnership aims to accelerate product development with AI, enabling data-driven research and development.

Background

Kafrit Group is expanding its market reach through strategic acquisitions and the operation of multiple companies worldwide, spanning three continents. Recently, Kafrit Group acquired Badger Color Concentrates Inc., a leading manufacturer of color concentrates and liquid colorants in the North American plastics industry. Managing chemicals, raw materials, formulations and finished goods data across these diverse entities with different local data systems presents a longstanding challenge.

Objective

Kafrit Group’s primary goal in integrating this materials informatics platform is to accelerate research and development, create a single source of truth for all R&D data and foster cross-group collaboration. Achieving data harmonization across the group with the support of this platform is a major milestone, allowing for faster delivery of new or adjusted products, better formulation suggestions and more effective alternative materials selection. This streamlined process also helps ensure compliance with regulations such as REACH and enhances overall service delivery to customers.

The Challenge

A primary challenge faced by the group is leveraging the wealth of knowledge and experience spread across its various companies to accelerate processes and product development. The goal is to harness this collective expertise more effectively, and data harmonization is a key milestone in achieving that.

The group's vision is a unified, harmonized materials and product catalog, available across the growing Kafrit Group, aimed at amalgamating diverse data systems into a single, coherent platform.

While this growth enriches the company’s capabilities, it also necessitates the integration of data across multiple enterprise resource planning systems, regulatory and quality control data systems, and scattered spreadsheets and PDFs, driving efforts to establish a streamlined and uniform structure.

Implementation

Cross-company data integration involves consolidating all data into a global catalog, which includes physical properties, chemical composition, regulatory and compliance information, supplier details and formulation data. The integration allows seamless daily updates and access to the catalogs and their underlying components or ingredients across all Kafrit Group companies.

Outcomes and Key Milestones

Data harmonization results show a marked enhancement in the accessibility and utilization of material data, cross-organizational learning and global team collaboration. This system ensures consistent, real-time updates of data throughout the company, facilitating compliance, selection and effective use of materials.

"Integrating MaterialsZone has not only solved a long-standing operational challenge but has also emotionally unified our global team by fulfilling a shared, decades-old vision," said Fabian Schulte, Kafrit Group's sustainability leader. "With various data sources currently used across the group, the platform now enables daily synchronization, allowing us to aggregate and standardize disparate elements into a unified knowledge center."

By centralizing data previously confined to silos within individual companies, the platform enhances visibility and usability across the organization, reduces research and development costs, and expedites time to market.

Sustainability

Kafrit Group has a longstanding commitment to sustainability, consistently striving to reduce environmental impact and promote eco-friendly practices within the plastics industry. The integration of this materials informatics platform into the research and development process further supports Kafrit Group’s sustainability initiatives.

This is accomplished by consolidating sustainability and compliance data into its raw material catalog. This provides Kafrit Group with greater visibility into the environmental implications of raw materials, allowing the company to select raw materials and develop products that align with its sustainability goals.

Current Direction

With data consolidation in place, Kafrit Group has begun to successfully leverage the platform’s AI-driven predictive analytics capabilities to accelerate product development, reinforcing its leadership in the plastics industry. The integration of AI models has already proven effective in enhancing the formulation process by minimizing trial and error, and facilitating efficient cross-company collaboration through the use of shared data.

The platform's Predictive Co-Pilot recommends experiments based on the specifications received from Kafrit Group’s clients. As a result, the number of lab iterations required to achieve the desired product properties has significantly decreased, saving both time and material resources, as well as optimizing researchers' hours in the lab. Researchers are also guided toward experimental directions they may not have explored otherwise, enabling them to create better products faster.

The harmonized data, combined with AI insights, is transforming Kafrit Group's approach to product development, leading to enhanced innovation and efficiency.

For more information, visit materials.zone.com.