Industrial AI is the future of sustainable operations

Posted: March 18, 2024

Today’s industrial winners will be those who embrace specialized digital technologies to optimize performance and resilience. That’s my takeaway from the ARC Industry Leadership Forum, recently staged in Orlando, Florida.

The multi-day event unpacked how forward-thinking industrial players are using artificial intelligence (AI) to create revenue and make production efficient and sustainable. Such companies are integrating targeted industrial applications—like industry-primed AI assistants, predictive analytics and vision assistants—throughout their value chains.

What’s more, future industry leaders are turning to digitization to dramatically reduce operational risk by using predictive asset management and AI-driven scheduling to boost supply-chain economics.

AI isn’t just one technology. It’s an expansive term that describes different mathematical techniques used to recognize patterns, detect anomalies, provide expert guidance and make predictions about what might happen next. Applying these techniques to industrial operations will create huge wins across all industries in the coming years—slashing fuel consumption, improving carbon capture, lowering emissions and optimizing equipment lifecycles.

Efficiency means sustainability

At the ARC Forum, I spoke about how AVEVA is partnering with its clients to make industry more sustainable by boosting industrial design and operations. AVEVA’s AI-powered solutions help customers:

• Engineer more quickly by creating simulations and suggesting designs
• Operate at optimal production levels for maximum efficiency
• Provide decision support to connected workers
• Reduce waste to maximize yield
• Recognize potential failures so they save on spare parts and maintenance

What do all of these capabilities have in common? They benefit everyone in the industrial ecosystem: the client, the customer—and the planet.

That’s the power of AI. It links data from operations, engineering, maintenance and IT to provide effective digital-twin solutions. By helping our clients drive digital intellect into their engineering and operations, it’s possible to develop sustainability performance calculations to assess the impact AI is having on improving CO2 emissions.

Connecting data with people

We use industrial AI to give our customers the knowledge and agility they need to respond to changing conditions in real time—so they become safer, more profitable and more sustainable. 

AI technologies have begun to evolve from task-based to objective-driven with human supervision. At AVEVA, we see this development as a huge benefit to businesses. AI can help pursue goals and link information dynamically in context.

For example, with just minimal setup, AVEVA AI combines the customer’s industrial data with a large language model (LLM) so the customer can ask it natural language questions. Users can ask objective-driven questions like, “Do I have any wind turbines offline right now?” or, “Which wind farm has the lowest energy output this week?”

AVEVA’s Vision AI Assistant can increase situational awareness and prevent machine failure. It can use infrared or thermal cameras to locate visual anomalies—or even recognize that an operator is missing a hard hat.

A partner for the future

Companies around the world are already getting massive sustainability and productivity benefits from AVEVA’s applied industrial AI:

• Spanish energy giant Acciona achieved a 4.6 percent reduction in the energy consumption of the company’s high-pressure pump and reduced its use of chemicals by improving the way it measures pollutants.
• Schneider Electric prevented three full factory outages by predicting issues in advance.

At AVEVA, we envision AI not as a replacement for human intellect, but instead as a tool and a partner. AI will continue to evolve in stages. It will progress from today’s software that assists humans, to software that works alongside humans—workers who are deeply connected to the technologies through easy-to-use interfaces.

In this world, industries become smarter, faster and, ultimately, better—for the planet and its people. Discover which AI solutions will take your industry to the next level.