Company: Fluxys Belgium

Accelerator

Working together to boost digital innovation at Fluxys

One team, One target! All Fluxys talents are working as one team to achieve our goal: a cleaner energy future. We are putting energy in motion, together. We are doing this today by making the best use of our current infrastructure and talents. At the same time, we are also laying the foundations for tomorrow, for a greener future.

A future in which molecules other than natural gas will provide us with energy. Our organisation's digital transformation is a key driver of the energy transition. How can we leverage the digital world, one that is opening up ever more opportunities for innovation, to prepare our services, infrastructure and working methods for a sustainable future?

First of all, we help our employees develop their digital skills and knowledge and, above all, kindle their interest in being innovative. We do this by working with digital coaches, providing training and sharing inspiring case studies with all our employees, for instance.

The Accelerator, our digital innovation hub, goes even further, allowing our talents to seek out-of-the-box solutions that can help achieve our goal. In the Accelerator, temporary, multidisciplinary teams tackle the challenges of the future, one by one. Each team spends six months working on one challenge. They apply the principles of agile and design thinking, each time with a fresh perspective and working closely with end users. The teams create, test and deliver tangible solutions that are ready to be rolled out within the organisation. In doing so, they are boosting Fluxys' digital transformation and contributing to the energy transition that we want to make a reality.

Would you also like to use your talent in an innovative organisation that is helping to build a greener future?

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Thanks to the Accelerator, I always keep in mind the following questions: Why are we doing this for end users? Is this actually needed? What do end users expect?

Bert Martens I Sales Support Manager

Team member ‘fluxybles’

Challenges & solutions

Digital twin

The 'twin4life' team is figuring out how to build a 'digital twin' of the Fluxys network that allows for the simulation and testing of gas flow plans before implementation. An innovation that is relevant not only today, but also in connection with our future plans to transport H₂.
Energy management

As part of the renewal of Fluxys' energy contract, the 'power rangers' developed a tool and process to monitor, predict and optimise energy consumption.
Intuitive traffic

The 'magnets' team focused on the renovation of Fluxys headquarters in Brussels, which will involve the temporary move to another building as well as a new way of working. They tested out an intuitive and simple solution for helping people find a suitable and available workplace. The solution was deployed right after the move.
Onboarding

The 'fluxybles' team reviewed the onboarding process from the point of view of a new employee and their manager. They developed an onboarding app to enable new Fluxys employees to integrate more quickly and easily into our company and to boost their engagement from the start.
Capacity simulation

The topology of our network is becoming increasingly complex and variable, especially in light of the use of new molecules. We need to adapt our way of working accordingly. Team 'delorean' tested out three solutions making it possible to more quickly simulate the impact of changes in our pipeline network on its capacity and drew promising conclusions.
Ship scheduling

The 'sea porters' set out to find digital solutions to boost the efficiency of the intensive scheduling of incoming ships at the Zeebrugge terminal. They successfully developed and tested two tools that fulfil this objective.
Small scale LNG

The 'imagineers' were challenged to develop a solution that could advance the market of small-scale (bio)LNG (fuel for trucks, ships or industry). They successfully developed and tested an online marketplace bringing together sellers, buyers and all logistics and commercial processes.

The Emix platform has now been fully integrated into our client services tools.
Energy consumption

The 'eco watchers' developed and tested multiple digital solutions that show promise in terms of reducing energy costs and emissions from our grid. Automatically controlling the heating of gas in our grid and lowering gas pressure and temperature can lead to an annual saving of 1.6 kilotonnes of CO₂ at a very low cost per kilotonne saved.
Smart commercial response

The 'kowalski' team is investigating how innovative technology can help make knowledge transfer among our sales support team and our key account managers more efficient. The goal is to answer our customers' questions just as well or even better, and to do so faster and with less effort. They're also keeping an eye on the findings of team 'eureka'!
Knowledge management

All knowledge about our gas flow activities is spread across many systems and heads. Team 'eureka' is looking into how we can share this knowledge better. Both the tools themselves and human behaviour are being examined and the tests involving an AI search tool are heading in the right direction.

Next step? Testing whether the user experience can be further improved.
Allocation defects

Team 'ghostbusters' are seeking an innovative way to quickly spot and detect allocation defects. These are errors resulting from an imbalance in the pipes, in other words a difference between what we think is in the pipes and what is coming out of them. This solution could save us a lot of time looking for errors while also limiting their financial impact. This might be a great opportunity to deploy the digital twin.

To be continued...

For me, the dynamics within an Accelerator team are remarkably inspiring!

Anne Vander Schueren I HR Director

Sponsor of ‘fluxybles’, the first Accelerator team