Q8 Oils, the lubricants business of Kuwait Petroleum International, blends and packages more than 1,000 lubricant products from over 6,000 recipes at its Antwerp plant. With 170 tanks, 40 km of piping and 7,000 valves, it is a plant where hundreds of formulations move through the same infrastructure at the same time.
Before Momentum, the operation ran on a mix of Excel, paper and point solutions, with a MES nearing end of life. To secure continuity and prepare for growth, Q8 Oils partnered with Brighteye to move from a standalone MES to a full manufacturing operations management platform.
The challenge
The existing MES was reaching the end of its life, while the demands on the plant kept rising.
Q8 Oils faced challenges typical for large-scale chemical blending operations:
- An end-of-life MES supporting business-critical blending operations
- Severe compliance regulations that leave little room for error
- Business growth: new customers with different SLAs, more products and packaging types, more formulations and a wider variety of batch sizes
Much of the reporting still done in Excel and on paper
"Q8 Oils did not want a like-for-like replacement. The goal was a platform that fits the digital roadmap and can grow with the business."
Thomas Van Wassenhove, Operations Manager
The approach: a business improvement project, not an IT project
Q8 Oils chose Momentum because it fits fully within its digital roadmap, lets the plant evolve from a MES to an embedded MOM system and supports the long-term ambition to roll out across the whole business.
The project was set up deliberately as a business improvement project:
- A phased approach with multiple iterations per phase
- A cross-functional team of more than 20 people from IT, OT and the business
- A clear project management structure and governance
- Led by the blending manager as business owner, not by IT
Three workstreams came together for the go-live:
- Momentum, delivered by Brighteye: configured and live for master data, inbound, blending recipes and outbound
- Infrastructure, delivered by IT and OT: production environment, SAP to MES integration, VM migration and shop floor hardware
- Business, delivered by the business owner and key users: testing, training and adoption
Key figures: from fragmented landscape to connected operations
Phase 1 went live on 17 April 2026. Business-critical flows went first.
Live today
- Inbound logistics, blending and outbound logistics run through Momentum
- SAP to MES integration in production
- Master data and blending recipes managed in one platform
Next on the roadmap
- Warehouse management
- Integration of filling lines and the weighbridge
- Extended SAP interfaces
- Detailed scheduling
- Reporting and dashboarding for manufacturing and filling
Eight functions across the plant, each running on its own tool before Momentum, now converge on one operational backbone.
The outcome
With phase 1 live, Q8 Oils has achieved:
- Continuity for business-critical blending operations, without an end-of-life MES
- A controlled launch after a demanding development and testing period
- One operational backbone for inbound, blending and outbound
- A scalable foundation for warehouse, filling and scheduling in phases 2 to 4
Q8 Oils now focuses on stabilising phase 1 while preparing the roll-out of the next phases. Each phase builds on the same backbone. As the project team puts it: “Business ownership is the most critical success factor.”
Why it matters for the chemicals sector
Lubricant and chemical blending plants combine high formulation counts, strict compliance and business-critical continuity. Q8 Oils shows that moving from a MES at end of life to a full MOM platform can be done step by step: business-critical flows first, then warehouse, filling and scheduling.
MOMENTUM turns a fragmented landscape into one operational backbone
For Q8 Oils, and for every process manufacturer facing growing complexity.
Explore how Momentum can transform your production.
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