Ipiranga's path to data-driven maintenance
Connected monitoring for sugar and ethanol production.
At a glance
Challenge
Reducing unplanned downtime in critical operations
Ipiranga needed to modernize critical mill and boiler equipment with digital monitoring – to reduce production halts and gain real visibility into equipment health.
Solution
Connected monitoring for 14 drive units
A customized service agreement connecting 14 Perfect Harmony GH180 medium-voltage drives with Inspire IQ for remote monitoring, expert support, and extended warranty.
Outcome
Smarter, faster maintenance decisions
Faster technical response, improved maintenance planning, and the ability to make data-driven predictive decisions – including a speed desynchronization fault resolved in under 10 minutes.
Watch how Ipiranga maximizes uptime with Digital Services
Ipiranga Agroindustrial: A leader in data-driven maintenance
Located in São Paulo, Brazil, Ipiranga Agroindustrial processes approximately 8.7 million tons of sugarcane annually during the 2025/26 harvest season. As one of the country's key players in sugar and ethanol production, the company is deeply committed to operational excellence, sustainability, and competitiveness.
With harvests running on tight seasonal windows, every hour of production counts. Any unplanned equipment failure doesn't just cost time – it directly impacts annual output. That's why Ipiranga chose to invest in digitalizing the most critical parts of its operation: the mill and boiler drives that keep production moving.
We see, in this tool, the value of intelligent maintenance through data, results, and reports that it provides us with.
Rafael Alves, Industrial Manager, Ipiranga Agroindustrial
The challenge: Avoiding downtime with data-driven maintenance
Processing millions of tons of sugarcane each season leaves no room for equipment surprises. Ipiranga's mill and boiler operations depend on medium-voltage drives running reliably – and without real-time visibility into equipment health, maintenance teams were forced into reactive firefighting rather than planned action.
The core results
No digital monitoring on critical drive units
Faults only visible after they occurred
Limited technical support speed
Remote diagnostics not yet in place
Operational data existed
But couldn't be turned into actionable maintenance insights
Production halts during harvest season
Carry disproportionate cost and risk
Ipiranga needed more than reliable hardware. They needed a connected solution that could surface issues early, shorten response times, and give maintenance teams the data they need to plan – not react.
A connected solution for data-driven maintenance
Ipiranga and Innomotics designed a customized service agreement built around one goal: turning raw operational data into maintenance decisions. Fourteen Perfect Harmony GH180 medium-voltage drives were connected to Inspire IQ, establishing a secure, continuous link between the plant floor and remote expert support.
This isn't just remote monitoring – it's a complete service layer. The agreement covers extended warranty, onsite and remote expert support, and continuous diagnostics access. When a speed desynchronization between motors was detected, the remote team identified and corrected the issue in under 10 minutes – before any component damage or extended production halt could occur.
The result: maintenance teams at Ipiranga shifted from reactive troubleshooting to informed, planned decision-making – with full visibility into equipment health at all times.
Products & services used
Outcomes
Faults resolved in under 10 minutes
Remote monitoring enables faster expert response
From reactive to data-driven maintenance planning
The technology allows us to make smart decisions, helping us plan maintenance more effectively for future off-seasons.
Ipiranga Agroindustrial maintenance team
Building on a foundation of data-driven maintenance
The Ipiranga project is more than a successful deployment – it's the starting point for a broader Industry 4.0 journey. The data transparency established through Inspire IQ has reduced operational risk and given Ipiranga's teams the confidence to plan further optimizations with real evidence behind them.
As the partnership evolves, the connected infrastructure already in place opens the door to predictive maintenance models, expanded monitoring scope, and tighter integration between equipment performance data and production planning. The off-season maintenance cycles that once relied on experience and estimation can now be built around actual equipment condition data.
For Ipiranga, this is what operational excellence looks like going forward: not just reliable machines, but an operation that learns from itself.
Data-driven maintenance for your operation
If Ipiranga's results resonate with your own challenges – unplanned downtime, reactive maintenance, limited equipment visibility – there's a clear path forward. Connected monitoring and expert service can give your team the insight they need to stay ahead of failures, not just respond to them.
Let's talk about what that looks like for your plant.
