Press Releases

November 15, 2022

Kurita Water Industries Ltd. (Head Office: Nakano-ku, Tokyo; President: Michiya Kadota; hereinafter "Kurita") and Fracta Leap Inc. (Head Office: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; CEO: Yasuhiro Kitabayashi; hereinafter "Fracta Leap") are pleased to announce the completion of the development and operational launch of a beta version^*1 of their application for automating the design of water treatment plant under their joint Meta-Aqua Project^*2, which aims to achieve digital transformation (DX) in the water treatment industry.

The Meta-Aqua Project had been developing application that automates and optimizes plant design work with the aims of dramatically improving the speed of proposals and drastically reducing design periods to meet customers' needs for shorter delivery times. As the first step in this process, the project team has completed the development of a beta version of the application that automatically designs layout drawings (layout of equipment, etc.), and started operational use by actual designers as of this month. (Beta versions of other automated design applications, which are developed as part of the project, will gradually enter operational use during this fiscal year.)

As a result, by operating a series of automated design applications, basic plant design^*3 workload is expected to be reduced by around 60%, with design periods being shortened by around 40%. It will also enable the high-speed selection of plant design proposals, leading to optimization of life cycle costs and improvement of lifetime value for water treatment plants, including reduction of environmental impact.

The completion of the beta version of the application also represents a technical breakthrough. Specifically, the application uses algorithms to automate basic plant design—the most upstream element of the design process—in particularly complex and highly challenging industrial fields of water treatment, which is unprecedented on a commercial basis globally. Kurita and Fracta Leap have already completed a joint patent application in relation to the algorithm technology.

With regard to future prospects, the project team aims to complete the development of an official release version of the series of automated design applications while obtaining feedback from designers. They will also strive to provide value to customers both in Japan and overseas through this application, while cooperating with each Kurita Group companies.

In line with this progress in the automated design application business, Fracta Leap is expanding its organizational structure and actively recruiting professional human resources such as architects/tech leads, mathematical optimization engineers, data engineers, product managers and business development leaders, with plans to have around 30–40 full-time employees by next year.

Notes

• *1A beta version: An early version of application, released mainly for testing purposes before the official version is distributed.
• *2"Meta-Aqua Project": A joint project between Kurita and Fracta Leap launched in 2020 with the aim of radically improving productivity through digital technologies for the sustainability of water treatment infrastructure. The project chiefly promotes smartification (more efficient and sophisticated) of water treatment plant design, production, operation and management using AI and IoT technologies. For details, please refer to this press release from August 20,
  2020: https://www.kurita.co.jp/english/aboutus/press200820.html
• *3Basic plant design: The stage of plant design where the general framework for the necessary equipment and its layout are determined, based on plant requirements, and translated into various schematic drawings.