Yara increases productivity, plant uptime, and safety with a digital twin on Azure

Yara International, a global fertilizer and chemicals company, runs many projects and complex plants that generate vital data. But the company lacked efficient tools to find and validate the data, making more work for the production team.

To reduce operational risk, Yara worked with Kongsberg Digital to deploy a digital twin (Kognitwin), running on Azure, that unifies plant, equipment, and engineering data into a single, secure, remote view, enabling faster, safety-critical decisions.

By consolidating on a unified, actionable platform, Yara achieved up to 70% faster resolution time after shutdown, reduced field trips by 60%, and increased efficiency by 50% in specific engineering tasks.

Industrial manufacturers aren’t reinventing the factory overnight. They’re tackling everyday problems: helping workers find information faster, reducing unplanned downtime, and training people quickly without compromising safety or quality. Yet many plants still rely on manual systems that have grown complex, making change difficult.

At Yara International, a global fertilizer and chemical manufacturer, that challenge was familiar. Its Porsgrunn plant in Norway spans 1.5 square kilometers—over four times the size of Disneyland Park in California. Engineers, maintenance planners, and operators managed huge volumes of operational data across the site and disconnected systems, and it often took longer to find and verify information than to do the work.

“We looked at the usual cloud options, but we chose Azure because it’s the one platform that holds security, identity, hybrid, and AI together in a way that actually fits industrial reality.”

Joseph Knutson, Delivery Lead, Kongsberg Digital

The daily cost of disconnected systems

“Much of the knowledge we needed was there, but it wasn’t connected,” says Merete Østby, Digital Manager at Yara. “You had to know where to look, or who to talk to, and often you still had to go out into the plant to confirm what you were seeing.”

Engineers spent much of the day searching for information instead of solving problems. Maintenance often required site visits, increasing cost and safety risk. Yara knew progress required a foundational first step: a unified industrial work surface to consolidate plant data into a shared, contextualized view and enable AI-assisted workflows.

Building a reliable industrial foundation

Yara’s goal was to support smarter, faster decisions at one of the world’s largest fertilizer plants. That meant reducing the need for engineers and maintenance teams to walk the floor to locate equipment, identify valves, or take measurements. Unifying fragmented plant data into a single operational intelligence layer was key.

“I have a clearer understanding of the challenges that exist in the plants, and the digital twin helps me make decisions more quickly. Because I have a deeper understanding, I feel safe with my decisions.”

Terese Hegnastykket, Stop Coordinator, Yara International

Working with partner Kongsberg Digital, Yara deployed a digital twin (Kognitwin) of its Porsgrunn plant operations using the Industrial Work Surface running on Microsoft Azure. “We looked at the usual cloud options, but we chose Azure because it’s the one platform that holds security, identity, hybrid, and AI together in a way that actually fits industrial reality,” says Joseph Knutson, Delivery Lead at Kongsberg Digital.

The Industrial Work Surface provides an always-on “brain layer” that consolidates information in one place. Instead of hunting across systems, workers navigate the digital twin, clicking a pipe or gasket for specs or matching equipment numbers with maintenance logs.

Yara’s engineers and maintenance workers can now access a single source of truth without traveling on‑site, collaborate remotely in the same contextualized view, and move faster from insight to action.

“I have a clearer understanding of the challenges that exist in the plants, and the digital twin helps me make decisions more quickly. Because I have a deeper understanding, I feel safe with my decisions,” says Terese Hegnastykket, Stop Coordinator at Yara.

Next, Microsoft Foundry provides the foundational models for agentic AI within the Industrial Work Surface to reason across structured and unstructured industrial data. This will automate routine decisions and optimize operations. “Access to the right data at the right time is how we define success, and our digital twin gets us there. We’re building something that can scale safely and deliver value over time,” says Roar Nilsen, Program Manager, Digital Engineering at Yara.

“Access to the right data at the right time is how we define success, and our digital twin gets us there. We’re building something that can scale safely and deliver value over time.”

Roar Nilsen, Program Manager, Digital Engineering, Yara International

Measurable gains without disrupting work

With the Industrial Work Surface in place, Yara sees up to 70% faster resolution time after shutdown, 60% reduction of field trips, and 50% efficiency increase in specific engineering tasks.

By establishing Azure as its industrial foundation, Yara is making plant work safer and more predictable. Engineers spend less time searching for information, teams respond faster to downtime-causing issues, and new workers get up to speed quickly without compromising quality or control. It’s factory reinvention, one step at a time.

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