Cloud Cycle: End-to-end Ready-Mix Quality Control Through Real-Time Data

Challenge:

Concrete is the most used material on earth, yet its production accounts for 8% of global CO2 emissions. A significant portion of this impact comes from inefficiency: approximately 5% of all ready-mix concrete is wasted due to quality disputes or delivery delays. Without real-time data, once a truck leaves the plant, the “slump” (workability) of the concrete is unknown, leading to rejected loads, high disposal costs, and unnecessary environmental impact.

Solution:

Cloud Cycle solves the “black box” of concrete transit by equipping mixer trucks with a smart, connected ecosystem:

• The CloudBox: A proprietary IoT sensor system installed on the truck that measures concrete rheology, temperature, and truck status in real-time.
• The CUBE Platform: A cloud-based dashboard that uses machine learning to analyze sensor data, allowing dispatchers and site managers to see exactly how the concrete is behaving during the journey.
• Automated Insight Generation: Real time insights and quality alerts are provided to operators, quality, and dispatch teams to ensure concrete quality for 100% of production. The CUBE platform generates automated production insights and metrics that enable production owners and general managers to drive production efficiency, and reduce material use. 

Results: 

Cloud Cycle’s technology transforms concrete from a manual, high-risk material into a digital asset.

• Waste Reduction: Customers see a 95% reduction in concrete wastage, with the system often paying for itself multiple times over through material savings alone.
• Production Optimization: Customers see cement and binder savings of 10kg per m³ through the Cloud Cycle Batch Optimization process. The CUBE platform dramatically reduces the variability in production quality, driving greater operational and quality performance, building the confidence needed to optimize.
• Sustainability Impact: By reducing returned loads and optimizing cement content, Cloud Cycle targets a 1% reduction in global CO2 emissions. In a single quarter of 2024, the system saved 100 tons of CO2 for a single customer.
• Operational Efficiency: Fewer rejected loads mean less downtime at the batch plant and smoother conversations between the job site and the dispatcher, significantly improving margins for ready-mix producers. The CUBE platform drives return on plant and RMX assets.

QUOTE: 

1. Ram Muthu, Head of Operational Excellence at Holcim: “Every truck that leaves our plants generates data that can optimize our concrete’s quality, our own operations, and our customers’ experience. With Cloud Cycle we can capture this data at scale and in real time, extending quality monitoring beyond the plant and to the point of delivery. Complementing Holcim’s AI-powered tools such as Q-Predict, this creates multiple quality checkpoints across the value chain, helping us improve deliveries and advance our decarbonization roadmap.”
   
2. Russell Elfenbein, Co-Founder and CEO of Cloud Cycle: “Digitizing ready-mix concrete is essential to reducing waste, cost, and carbon in construction reliably and at scale. Our partnership with Holcim is a meaningful step toward our mission of cutting global carbon emissions by 1%. By automating critical quality and operational processes across the concrete delivery value chain, we’re helping build a smarter, more sustainable industry.”