IFS Assets CollABorative - Think Tank Session – 2023 Retrospective + 2024 Ramp Up

Date of Meeting: 16 November 2023 10:00 AM US Eastern Time 

Slide: IFS Assets CollABorative

• If you look at these topics, which would be the ones where you would say that you would shout out and say, hey, this is something that I would like to discuss, not from a demo perspective, but to really share knowledge on in the coming years.

• Predictive & Perspective
• Projects & Capex
• Digital Twin
• Safety & Permitting
• Compliance

Questions / Answers / Feedback / Responses:

• Q: I was at a mining event in Australia 2 weeks ago. Everybody is talking about sustainability. I don't know how it is in the north of the US, you may have a different angle to all of that, but it's about electrification of the mines, it's about electrification of the vehicles. It's about community inclusion. I mean, everything is ESG and sustainability. How does it resonate with you guys?
• R: Yeah. Certainly it's at the forefront. So, of our leadership's thinking, the main goal here is to make sure that we have resources lined up for the next 200, 300 to 500 years, so that the company can last that long. So that’s the current leaderships challenge. And then, the most efficient way to capitalize on those resources, will be I’m guessing that that will be the next generations task.

• Q: What makes up a digital asset?
• A: There is many definitions of digital assets. I think many people think of 2D or 3D models. I think we look at it more as a like a hub for data, so that you have like a real time view of what your excavator is doing or your mining truck or your whatever it is that you have running. It's real time or near real time. So, it basically will tell what your assets health is at this moment, but it also scans for negative trends or for combinations of factors that contribute to failures or that that require machine learning or AI or different algorithms. But I think the essence is to combine the asset management information from your EAM system like the asset hierarchy and the definition of it, the maintenance requirements and the maintenance history, together with the operational data, and then all together like 1 view of, this is the health of my asset and when it deteriorates, I want to know about it. There’re many side applications to these platforms that we are not so interested in here for APM but that includes also like loss analysis, financial accounting, production accounting and all that kind of stuff that might be interesting, but not for me. But for me it's the platform about creating this digital model of the asset. So, I think for us, a digital twin is at least not only like a 2D or 3D model that you can turn in 3D or something like that, it looks spectacular on the screen, but it's actually to know the current health of your asset based on the operational data that you have available. So, the smarter your asset, the more you know. But the problem I think for many companies is that this data comes from many sources, right? You have a SCADA system. You have your OEM provide data; you have people doing manual oil sample analysis of your engines. And all of that somehow needs to concentrate in one view of the world.
• F: Yeah. And we even had that problem. During COVID or just before COVID, we started a project with CAT to start to monitor the health with the CAT monitor, and then at the same time, we were also buying Komatsu equipment. And so, then Caterpillar said, yeah, sure, you can bring your Komatsu equipment into here, but that died during COVID because they didn't have anybody that we could have help us on that project. So, I see the advantage of a system like this that is agnostic to the manufacturer, right? It just wants data.
• R: Exactly. And of course, there are probably many more sources, so from other from CAT and not Komatsu. So even though for example another mining company, they have Caterpillar trucks mostly, but all that data actually goes to Caterpillar, it doesn't go to them and then some output and health reports and analytics are provided to them. But they want to play themselves. Plus, they do oil sample analysis and they that send that out to a laboratory comes back, they entered it into the application, so that they also have trends on the degradation of the lubricants and the oils etcetera. So, this one was specifically from mining, but actually if you look at it, everybody has assets, everybody has smarter assets all the time, and basically the story holds true for anybody and everybody.
• F: Yeah. And we're highly digitized. I mean, most of our plant, we're already there. And so, then this would be the next natural step. But then also, I report to the CFO and so and in discussing some of this with him, he goes jeez, something like that would be awesome too for like, general Ledger analysis. What's happened here, I'm just feeding it data and it's looking for anomalies, so there could be some advantages there too and you mentioned that as well.
• R: It's interesting that you say that. So, you report to the CFO. Because the CFO typically has different value drivers, that resonate in the boardroom. He's concerned with margin, concerned with revenue, maybe safety, compliance, those things are not necessarily with an individual asset and how it runs. However, excited we get when we have dashboards like this. So, I think one of the tenants of APM is to translate, the asset information to kind of financial outcomes to make sure that your boss is also happy.

• Q: How do you guys look at AI and that kind of stuff? Is that something that you're dabbling in already or talking about? and let me explain a little bit further. AI to help in anomaly detection. Now that we have all this access to data, how can we be helped in turning a massive amount of data that is no longer readable or understandable by a human? How can we still do something with it? I'm not sure if you know what the zettabyte is, but a Zeta is a 1 with 21 zeros. So, as I understand, the world generates from an IoT standpoint only 64 zettabytes of information annually. And 99% of that is unused. There's so much data that we have access to, but we need tools like APM or AI or machine learning to actually use it for something. So, when we say AI, we don't necessarily mean how Netflix or Apple TV recommends the next movie to you. Or ChatGPT helps you in writing a piece of text, but really how can it help in detecting anomalies that otherwise would remain hidden and then would just happen.
• F: I think here it's mostly viewed as people understand the potential of it, but don't know how to realize the potential. I would say that in a nutshell, that's where we're at.
• R: Knowing it's there, but not knowing what the potential is or what exactly to do with it, that's aligned with some of the feedback we've been getting in other sessions. From the perspective of two ways, one is, can IFS help by illustrating some of the areas where AI can provide value in different industries, different products and then also where it is embedded in the solution, making sure that we're illustrating that for folks so they can talk within the organization about some of the things that are AI enabled. So, I think it's a good point for us to come back to and maybe have Bob De Caux or someone do a session next year talking about, as we look at the world of assets specifically, what are some of the things that are already in the works or exist and what are some of the areas of opportunity? One of the pieces of feedback we got is that one of our customers said that “I think you give us too much credit that we understand already how we should be using AI or where we could be using AI” and we don't. So, taking it back to not rushing to here's what IFS is doing with AI, but first, talking about, here's the areas of opportunity from a business value perspective for AI in the different industries we reach.
• R: A very valid point. We often used a slide to talk about asset management maturity and obviously it goes from industry or maintenance 1.0, which is fixed stuff when it breaks, and then 2.0 which is add preventive to it and then 3.0 which is more condition based, 4.0 which is to apply all this and somehow as we evangelize we assume, because everybody talks about 4.0 and we assume that everybody is there, but actually, if I ask people honestly, give me honest where are you on that maturity scale? They probably all say between 1.5 and 2. And this is exactly what Sarah is saying. We get asked to show our vision and our tools to reach 4.0, and by the way, there's many visionaries already talking about 5.0, somehow one of the angles of industry 5.0 or maintenance 5.0 is explain ability of AI. People maybe are afraid of it, that's why I said friend or foe. Afraid or it's unknown and can it help me in what whatever it is, but we also need to with 5.0 explain what AI is and. how does it come to certain conclusions. It has been, even the tools that we have at our disposal have been used in the mining industry quite successfully to remove mysterious breakdowns by looking at the data, what a human would not interpret. It's a fantastic topic for us to evangelize on because we have great tools for it, but we maybe need to evangelize a little bit further and show the value. I think in the end it's all about that, so if it provides business value then I think it should be a no brainer.
• F: And I know that you're obviously focused on asset management, but when I think of assets, I think of our human assets more than our physical assets. Those are the most important ones. So that might be interesting to explore. How can AI help us manage our human capital as well.
• Q: And when you say that, in which direction are you thinking? Are you thinking in planning and scheduling AI or in other areas like training?
• A: Yeah, I think training, development, knowing where we're pushing people too hard, or we're not pushing them enough. Knowing what the rest of the world around us is doing and comparing that to what we're doing.
• R: I think there are three angles of industry 5.0. One is human centricity, the other one is explain-ability of AI and the third one is sustainability as an outcome. So ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) themes captures that a little bit. The social part is the human part of the of it. ESG is also abused by investors and by boards of directors to say our ESG scores are great. ESG encapsulates all of that. But we can maybe split that out and put a human touch on it. In the end, we can take many humans out of the equation from an analytical standpoint and work preparation standpoint, and from a robotic standpoint, in terms of IT systems, but in the end, when something is broken on the truck, you cannot send the robot, so people are still executing and they need to have the right skills and they need to work in proper ways and all that.

• Q: How about smart assets? I was at a mining event and everybody was talking about autonomous mining and about autonomous vehicles. First of all, electrified vehicles, but then also like self driving vehicles, self driving excavators, is that a theme at all in your organization?
• A: Yes, it is. So, we're doing some lights out automation of some of our plants, but the first one that we did was actually a ready mix concrete plant. So the as the truck approaches, there's a GPS on the truck. As the truck approaches the plant, it spins up and starts to make the concrete it's going to load into the truck when it gets there, and it's taking in environmental factors into consideration and things like that to make concrete, with the proper moisture and the proper retardants and accelerators and things like that, that it needs. So, we haven't fully realized that yet, we still have a person out there operating that plant, but it is set up in order to do that when we're ready to let it go automated. We have some minds to change yet.
• R: I think this is a big step for many people, especially in the conservative industry. Increasing the amount of IT inside the assets and that things that can go wrong are not necessarily only for people with blue coveralls to fix with the wrench and a hammer, but we need IT engineers to check software to do upgrades, to remote, have licenses. There's a bunch of computers in those in those smart machines nowadays.

Next Meeting: 12 December 2023 10:00 AM US Eastern Time
IFS Combined CollABorative - Tech Talk Session with Raymond Jones, SVP, Unified Support at IFS

If you are an IFS Customer and you would like to join the CollABoratives, please click here to fill out the form.