IBM saves 10% in Energy Costs using AI at Bangalore Facility
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) has started saving 10% on BESCOM (Bangalore Electricity supply company Ltd) utility bills at its Embassy GolfLinks (EGL) facility in Bangalore, India by using IBM Tririga Building Insights, which was launched in June 2018. The 10 per cent month-on-month saving was achieved using existing meters.
“We are eating our own dog food,” said Shalini Kapoor, Director of Watson IoT, IBM India Software Labs, referring to the company using its own products or services for its internal operations. “We are now figuring out how to make the IOT devices rugged and how to prevent the rodents from eating the wires.” She was speaking at the CII Karnataka Annual CTO Conference.
In September last year, IBM introduced new Watson solutions and services pre-trained for a variety of industries and professions. Combining industrial IoT and AI, IBM IoT Buildings Insights can decode data that commercial properties create so that building managers can leverage that data to help reduce energy costs and understand occupancy dynamics in buildings, allowing them to understand and prepare for different occupancy patterns.
“There is no Artificial Intelligence (AI) without Information Architecture (IA). We have to hire more people who can architect the data and data scientists. That is the churn we are doing in our organisation for AI,” said Shalini Kapoor.
Speaking at the event, Sanjiv Kovil, CTO Wipro, said that digital transformation in companies usually follows a templated approach. “They identify a pilot or use case to run that technology. Like in blockchain, there are upwards of 1500 pilots but less than 100 are on the way to production. Many of them are struggling to find their way into production. Many of these pilots address the lowest hanging use case. Lot of renovation is required to absorb innovation. Seventy percent of the work to roll out is mundane work while thirty percent is the real catalyst that the innovation brings in. One needs to identify the top pains within the organisation. It is easier to sell medicine for illness than for wellness,” he said. Wipro has around 50 blockchain pilots and the conversion is less than 20% according to him.
“Using our Asset Performance Management software we shifted from schedule based maintenance to condition based maintenance (at the turbine shroud manufacturing facility in Muskegon, Michigan). We moved to a more efficient way to predict failure. Same thing has been applied on our products. For the engine to spend maximum amount of time on the wing is a desirable outcome. We want to make sure that if we take an engine off wing it is at the right time. The GE 90 engine has demonstrated a 20% improvement in time on wing. Pace of change in last few years has been exponential. We have proven things internally before we have taken it externally,” said Abhishek Narain, Director, Data & Analytics, GE Aviation.
According to Vinay Shenoy, Managing Director, Infineon Technologies Pvt. Ltd., it takes 3.5 billion dollars to set up a new factory. In order to tackle the challenges of being capital intensive and dealing with the yearly price erosion on semiconductors(30–50%) the company has started automating price quotes to customers by looking at around 15 different parameters (like market demand). “The goal is to make a deal with minimum possible iterations with a customer,” says Vinay Shenoy. Infineon’s factories generally employ around 800 people per factory (The company has 12 factories). The company has reduced operators from 88% to 17% by using fully autonomous robots. Engineers are managing the factory remotely.
“In healthcare, adoption of the cloud is still lukewarm but it will take off. There are concerns about privacy and data residency. It is easier to fix the technology than to fix the business model,” said K R Shivakumar, Chief Architect and Fellow, Philips Innovation campus. He was speaking about challenging culture and revitalising change.
