Beyond Built: The Future of Facilities and Asset Management
AI’s Sweet Spot in Maintenance and Reliability with Todd Beckerdite, Sr. Manager, Maintenance Foundation at Ajinomoto Foods
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Episode notes
What is the future of AI and maintenance? Todd Beckerdite, Sr. Manager of Maintenance Foundation at Ajinomoto Foods, gives some predictions. Todd emphasizes that while AI can't perform physical tasks, it offers potential for aiding in maintenance and troubleshooting. Eric, Richard, and Todd expand the discussion to include the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), highlighting how these technologies can predict issues before they occur. Join us as we explore the upcoming revolution in industrial maintenance.
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Key Quotes:
TODD: The one thing that I see a lot of technicians saying is, AI can't turn a wrench. Yeah, AI can't turn a wrench. But I don't see AI taking people out of the equation when it comes to the physical maintenance and troubleshooting of a piece of equipment, at least anywhere in our near future. But I do think that it has some great merits and I think that the possibilities are there.
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RICHARD: When you broaden that out to the Internet of Things and the industrial Internet of Things and other automation, and how these may interplay with each other, not only to help once something is broken, but before it is broken. And how it may help to take elements of these different technologies and predict what's going to happen. How are you seeing that evolve over time from your perspective?
TODD: That's a really good place that most maintenance departments want to get to, is as close as you can to true predictive maintenance. There are systems out there that can get you fairly close already… What I would love to see AI do is take the information. And build its own upper and lower limit. If you go above the upper limit, that triggers an alarm to say, hey, you need to go look at this, or below the lower limit, same thing.
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TODD: That's the sweet spot right now for those older pieces of equipment is saying, is there something out there that can connect? And without having a human write down, well I started the equipment this time, I stopped the equipment this time, and this thing happened when I stopped it. Nothing against humans, by the way, because I'm one of them. There's bound to be errors. In that scenario, and an error, you know, the quality of your data in will equal the quality of your data out. So when it comes to that kind of information, you want it as accurate and as unbiased as possible.
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TODD: When equipment works as it's supposed to, it should, you should have a reasonable expectation that it's going to bring down your utility bills. When equipment does not work well, you should have a reasonable expectation that your utility bills are going to go up.
All of these things are intertwined where you say, now you've got AI that's helping you troubleshoot and bring that downtime down. You should reasonably expect to see your utility bills come down.
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Time stamps:
00:28 - In the News
06:41 - The argument for AI
10:14 - Moving towards predictive maintenance
18:33 - What to do with your data
23:24 - Sustainability initiatives
29:18 - Rapid fire round
36:25 - Find Todd on LinkedIn @ Todd Beckerdite
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