Founded in 2018, TripleAlpha is a technology company specialized in data analytics, like many others. However, it is its approach that distinguishes Padrón’s consultancy from others in the big data sector: a work focused on the industrial field and, especially, linked to the food sector. “The founding partners come from this sector. We have more than 15 years of experience each, and we feel very comfortable. Many of the clients also already know us from our past,” says Álvaro Dosil, TripleAlpha’s technical director.
For these clients, the company carries out an automation of its data collection processes, as Dosil explains: “Usually, in companies the data is collected in paper format or manually. We take this data to the cloud and, from there, the models and technical applications of machine learning to help them make better decisions, both at the operational and at the business level”.
Machine learning in optimization processes
As a branch of artificial intelligence, machine learning is based solely on working with data. Data that, because it is the most abundant in industries, such as raw materials, speeds or wastage, is the object of TripleAlpha’s work: “With all of it we generate data lakes and, from there, we develop dashboards to help businessmen and production managers to make better decisions”, says Dosil.
In this way, the transformation of data into knowledge allows customers to obtain useful information. Information that significantly improves decision-making, having a direct impact on the profitability, and thus optimizing their business. As exemplified by the director, “if we go to a company in the dairy sector, the one who makes the decisions is usually a master cheesemaker. Therefore, many times the decisions are made based on experience. But what our systems do is that the decisions are solely and exclusively taken based on data, to reproduce patterns that worked in the past and identify which were the optimal processing conditions. Our system recommends these conditions to the master cheesemaker, in order to achieve more profitable products that are also always very homogeneous”.
The BBFood accelerator, starting point for Alpha Cloud
An application of this knowledge is the project called Alpha Cloud, the cloud tool that facilitates the improvement of production processes. “When we started, we were focused solely and exclusively on the analysis of company data. But we realized that industrial companies still lack a lot of data. At that time we decided to bet on creating Alpha Cloud, a data monitoring platform that works with cloud tools like Microsoft Azure”.
A project for which the BFFood accelerator was vital, and for which they received an endowment of 25,000 euros: “At that time there were only three of us. We didn’t have many resources, so we decided to present ourselves to the BFFood accelerator. And it was a decisive step. Many of our customers who are in the food sector, they got to know us at that stage, which allowed us to do real networking”. The accelerator helped them develop Alpha Cloud, with the help of the Torre de Núñez company, which acted as their mentor and, subsequently, they also participated in the consolidation phase, with the Galacteu company. “Right now we are already working with Alpha Cloud for the food sector and other sectors, for which we are very grateful to Clusaga, the Galician food cluster,” adds Dosil.
The platform has allowed them to consolidate their position in the food sector, in addition to facilitating their entry into other areas such as textiles, the automotive industry or services. Because its system has application in all types of sectors or companies, according to the technical director: “We can work in any sector where there is a dependent variable, and try to model what are the causes that affect that objective indicator. For example, in the dairy sector. The objective in this sector is to produce the greatest quantity, but also quality, of milk per head of cattle. And that depends on the feeding, vaccination or the welfare of the cows. What we do is correlate all these parameters to design models that allow optimizing this process. So, wherever there is a dependent variable and there are independent variables that affect it, we can model those relationships”.
A triple profile company?
As Dosil, an industrial engineer and doctor in particle physics, relates, TripleAlpha was born after years working in Switzerland at CERN’s particle accelerator: “In the process which is the academic career, I saw the possibility of applying this knowledge of data science, which is applied to the analysis of pure physics, to the industrial field. And I returned to Galicia and we decided to set up TripleAlpha”.
Belonging to a STEM career, with an average age of 30 years and being women a 60% of them, the eleven people who currently make up the TripleAlpha staff also respond to a triple profile, distinctive of the projects carried out by the company that the physicist directs: “We have industrial engineers, who are the ones who analyze the process, who detect areas for improvement. We have mathematicians and physicists, who are dedicated solely and exclusively to the analysis part. And we have computer scientists and telecos, who dedicated to developing computer applications or web forms”.
Strategic sectors with projects of future
From the beginning, TripleAlpha made a firm commitment to the strategic sectors of Galicia, for which it is formulating various vertical solutions. One of them, for the dairy sector, known as DigitLAC. According to the technical director, “this solution, built under Alpha Cloud, aims to be a comprehensive solution to ensure that the livestock sector, by analyzing the information it has today, is more profitable and more productive”. Through a partnership with PS VET, the Galician veterinary company provides them with the knowledge of the sector, to which they apply their experience in data science: “The platform aims to collect all the information from the farms in order, with that information, to help the farmer to make decisions regarding vaccination, feeding and care of them, to produce more and better quality milk”, he adds.
In addition, this company, which has the seal of innovative SMEs, participates in an industrial thesis with the University of Santiago: “Industrial theses are theses that are made between the academic and industrial fields. In this, in which it participates the Galician Institute of Physics of High Energy of Santiago (IGFAE), we try to see what are the limits of machine learning, in order to apply them to the industrial field. Because we have to always be on the frontier of knowledge, to be able to take it to the industry”.
