Case study

    Woikoski’s digital leap: real-time manufacturing built on industrial heritage

    Woikoski is a fourthgeneration Finnish industrial company. Founded in 1882, it has evolved into a modern provider of industrial, medical, and welding gases. Today, the company is advancing toward data-driven, real-time operations and a modern digital factory, beginning with a pilot at the Kokkola plant as part of Woikoski’s business digitalization initiative.

    Service

    Data and AI

    Industry

    Industry Manufacturing

    The digital initiative has been driven by Woikoski’s CEO and CIO from the outset, ensuring strong executive sponsorship and sustained leadership commitment. Microsoft introduced Nortal as a trusted partner for production digitalization, and together with the Woikoski and Nortal teams, has developed a long-term roadmap. This plan includes a designfirst pilot, a shared governance and operating model, and a modern data platform with realtime analytics powered by Microsoft Fabric.

    Objective: real-time and proactive insights to spark action

    From the outset, Woikoski defined two primary objectives: to make factory-floor and equipment data easily accessible to leaders and operators, and to shift from retrospective reporting to real-time, data-driven decision-making. These goals were intended to unlock new opportunities that strengthen performance and support sustainable growth across the organization.

    In seeking a partner with deep experience in industrial digitalization programs, Woikoski was introduced to Nortal by Microsoft. The collaboration between Woikoski and Nortal began with a comprehensive assessment of Woikoski’s existing data and solutions, evaluating organizational and technical readiness, and designing a pilot project to validate the approach.

    “We started with the business vision, roles, and governance, and then supported Woikoski to select the tech to fit. This consultationfirst approach, distinctive to Nortal, gave Woikoski a scalable foundation that is in line with Woikoski’s business and IT strategies, instead of a oneoff technology project,” explains Jukka Kostiainen, Nortal’s Value Architect.

    Leadership commitment from strategy to execution

    The three pillars at the core of the Woikoski and Nortal collaboration are:

    A digital strategy for operations, strongly endorsed by Woikoski’s top leadership, consisting of a shared vision for digital manufacturing and a practical, long-term roadmap.

    A digital operating and governance model designed to break down silos, enable end-to-end process thinking, and provide clear, transparent KPIs for better business oversight.

    The Kokkola pilot with Microsoft Fabric & realtime analytics, to demonstrate what digitalization will mean in practice to Woikoski in terms of competencies, organization, technology, and execution.

    As a first step, the team delivered a small OT data platform pilot on Microsoft Fabric, establishing a foundation for future data products across production, energy, and finance. This pilot enables secure cloud-based data transfer and lays the groundwork for developing reporting tools such as Power BI, as well as a governance model for managing and sharing information across the organization. 

    Teija Hölttä, CIO, Woikoski

    “Microsoft Fabric and real-time analytics allowed us to deliver results quickly, while also building a solid foundation for the future. The Kokkola pilot marked an important step towards greater transparency in operations, laying the foundation for future predictive capabilities and, ultimately, our long-term vision of an autonomous factory.”

    Single real-time view and predictions drive efficiency and customer satisfaction

    Collaboration with Nortal is bringing a new level of transparency and efficiency to Woikoski’s operations. Data from six to seven different sources now flows into a single, unified system, providing both management and plant teams with a real-time view of the entire site. This replaces the previous reliance on manual data collection from multiple systems or even physical visits to the control room, making daily production management smoother and providing a comprehensive view that wasn’t previously possible.

    The business benefits are already evident at the Kokkola factory. While Woikoski is still in the early stages of its digital journey, the potential impact is substantial — especially in improving the ability to predict major process failures, helping to avoid costly disruptions and optimize performance.

    Maintenance activities can now be planned with far greater precision. For example, oil top-ups are performed at the optimal moment when equipment is operating at full power, an action that previously required the control room but can now be verified on a tablet directly at the machine. Real-time dashboards and shared KPIs accelerate decision-making, while a unified data foundation simplifies operational leadership for both factory and production managers.

    The business benefits are already evident at the Kokkola factory. While Woikoski is still in the early stages of its digital journey, the potential impact is substantial — especially in improving the ability to predict major process failures, helping to avoid costly disruptions and optimize performance.

    Maintenance activities can now be planned with far greater precision. For example, oil top-ups are performed at the optimal moment when equipment is operating at full power, an action that previously required the control room but can now be verified on a tablet directly at the machine. Real-time dashboards and shared KPIs accelerate decision-making, while a unified data foundation simplifies operational leadership for both factory and production managers.

    Kari Salovaara, CFO, Woikoski

    “Avoiding just one major compressor failure could cover the entire cost of the pilot investment in predictive maintenance capabilities.”

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