Combining AI and IoT to Drive Digital Processes with Whirlpool and McDermott CIOs | Technovation 613

Welcome to Technovation. I'm your host, Peter High. Our broadcast today features a conversation from our most recent Meta-Strategy Digital Symposium on the topic of combining artificial intelligence and the internet of things to drive digital processes. The conversation featured Vagesh Dave, the Chief Information Officer of McDermott International, and Danielle Brown, the Chief Information Officer of Whirlpool, and the gentleman who led the conversation, the Vice President and Head of Meta-Strategy's Central Office, Michael Bertha. Mike, welcome. Great to speak with you.

Always happy to be here, Peter.

Well, Mike, let's go into that topic: combining AI and IoT to drive digital processes. Those are certainly two very important trends, so no surprise this would be something we tackle. But that said, I'd love to hear in your own words why you found that to be a salient topic for a digital symposium.

Yeah, as you said, two powerful trends, even more powerful when combined. We see clients across multiple industries digitizing as many processes or experiences as they can to increase the volume and variety of data that they can collect, and then aggregating that data across the different dimensions of an organization—functions, business units—and using that as the basis to apply AI and machine learning to create insights and predictions that they can feed back into the digitized processes to make them more automated and more intelligent. And so we thought it would be great to bring in a great combination of speakers to articulate how they're going towards this combination of AI and IoT within their own organizations.

Well, let's talk about that briefly if we could. So I mentioned Vagesh from McDermott International and Danielle Brown from Whirlpool. Why these two leaders as people who personify the trends you just described?

Sure. I think it was largely driven by IoT often being thought of in two schools of thought. The first being industrial IoT, and who better to speak to industrial IoT than Vagesh? He's one of the industry's leading thinkers around digital twinning, a major application with AI. And then on the other end of IoT, consumer IoT, who better than Danielle Brown, leader of one of the largest consumer appliances companies in the world? So we thought that would be an interesting juxtaposition.

Thank you for that overview, Mike. Without further ado, let's get into that conversation: combining AI and IoT to drive digital processes, featuring Vagesh Dave of McDermott International, Danielle Brown of Whirlpool, in conversation with Meta-Strategy's Mike Bertha. Thanks, Peter.

I appreciate it.

So as Peter said, we've got a great panel. Just to tee it up, I think we all know that the Internet of Things is increasingly used as a tool, one of many, to increase the volume, variety, and velocity, and then artificial intelligence is used to create insights and predictions that can be embedded into digital processes to make them more intelligent and more automated, and continue to improve these processes with each iteration of the closed-loop aspect of IoT and AI. So I'm very excited about this panel today since we're going to talk about IoT and AI in a consumer and industrial setting with our panelists. So Danielle, thank you for joining us. Welcome to the virtual stage.

Of course. So you're the CIO of Whirlpool, the world's leading kitchen and laundry appliance company, sales of around $20 billion, about 78,000 employees, and more than 50 manufacturing and technology research centers around the globe. So I was wondering if you could kick us off by telling us a little bit how IoT and AI fit into the strategy at Whirlpool.

Wow, thanks Danielle, that's really comprehensive and I appreciate that response. So I'll turn to you, Vagesh. You're the Global CIO of McDermott International, and your firm focuses on engineering, procurement, and construction activities for some of the largest oil field development projects in the world. So it seems that oil and gas, or energy as an industry, has really recently doubled down on digital technologies and are really leaning into IoT as a key enabler. I was wondering if you could maybe share your perspectives on some of the forces behind that doubled-down focus right now and what opportunities do you see for IoT and AI?

Sure, definitely, Michael. At McDermott, we do onshore, offshore development in the weather—offshore for building platforms or onshore LNG plants or ethylene crackers. But again, you know, energy is a people business. So as we started our journey a few years ago in the digital space, the focus was on: how do we reduce cost, but how do we improve the safety in everything we do? So we look for opportunities in our yards, on our vessels, in our construction sites to improve productivity. But at the same time, we look for opportunities where we can do things remotely so we don't have to send people in harm's way, and we can actually improve just overall safety and quality of life for people who work for us. Now, as I look at the change, this is the first covered environment in a hybrid work environment. We are now exploring more of these technologies: can we do things more remotely where folks don't have to travel? Also, can we do things in a sustainable manner? Our customers are asking for this. So now, as we look at a lot of data that we have collected over the years from our yards, vessels, a lot of other assets, we're merging them in a data lake to gather insights and say, okay, we're doing things in a more efficient way, but now what does sustainability mean for us? And how do we do it in a more sustainable way as we build the assets so our customers can not only operate them in a sustainable way, but we start to design and engineer them in a very sustainable way.

That's great. Thank you so much for sharing that, Vagesh. Shifting back to you, Danielle. When we had our prep discussions, you mentioned some really unique product innovations, which is one of the pillars that you mentioned, and some interesting partnerships. I'm wondering if you could maybe tell us a little bit about some of the product innovations and partnerships, maybe some of the use cases they unlocked, and if IoT and AI plays a role in enabling them, maybe you could highlight that.

Well, that's great, Danielle, and I think it really illustrates a strong ecosystem externally and mentioning some of the really key tech enablers and the process and experience enablers as well. I really like that. So, Vagesh, and Danielle mentioned this earlier too, one of the things that seems to be a really compelling digital enabler in the oil and gas space, among a lot of industrial spaces and even consumer, is the concept of a digital twin. It's a really pertinent topic for this panel since it leverages IoT as well as artificial intelligence and several other technologies that I haven't mentioned. I'm wondering if you could explain this sometimes difficult-to-grasp concept of a digital twin and how IoT and AI play, and what kind of outcomes from a business perspective this can help drive in the oil and gas space.

Great, great, Michael. So at McDermott, we started our journey on the twin probably ahead of everybody else, and we are quite mature, at least in terms of what we are doing with design twinning. And when we look at digital twin, we kind of look at design twinning and operational twinning. The original goal was to really capture a lot of data from our assets, whether it's a vessel that's actually constructing something offshore, or a crane operator, or even a cherry picker trying to do something on a construction site. We collect a lot of data from this, and that kind of allowed our customers to have the data when in the operating phase of the asset. And you know, Danielle talked about leveraging a lot of data for getting insights. We've been doing that for the last few years, where a lot of our guys who either work in marine or they work on construction sites can actually look at a lot of data from their assets, how they're operating it, and they're doing it more efficiently and get more insights. And from the IT side, what I had done is I kind of said, okay, we are not in the business of building reports, so we will enable large analytics and data where business can actually go and visualize it and they can play with the data, and really their job is to get insights and make better decisions. Now, when I go back to the twin, one of the things we are now working on is a lot of our customers are coming and telling us, look, we are able to operate a lot of things that you build—this LNG plant or an offshore platform—in a very sustainable way. How can you start from the original design and construction and carry the sustainability theme all the way through? And twin allows you to do that. Design twin allows us to capture a lot of those things, a lot of data around the carbon content, and still our engineers can design around that, and they can actually from the very start design the asset in a sustainable way and provide the same twin to customers where they can actually reduce the carbon footprint through the life of the asset along with the cost. And you know, we've made a lot of progress in this area in terms of allowing our workers in a yard to automate a lot of things they used to do, using either sensorized overrides or models for our assets. Right now, they can efficiently leverage a particular asset in the yard by providing them a mobile device where they can actually book a particular asset like a cherry picker or forklift, which not only allows efficient use of the asset but also to measure the efficiency of the workforce in our yards and construction sites. And again, the use cases just tend to evolve, Michael. In the post-COVID world, we are now seeing how do we allow engineers who work remotely to collaborate with customers using either a 3D model review or using virtual reality type stuff. We have done a lot of remote inspections. We have started in all our yards to put in models where customers can remotely join and do a 3D view of the model without getting to the yards physically. And then this space is continuously evolving. I'm really excited. I think this is one reason it's an exciting time to be a CIO now, because IT has taken up a front stage in enabling the business, and post-COVID environment really just infuses a business with technology which is moving at a very, very rapid pace.

That's so good, and I really appreciate that explanation. I think digital twin is something that is very compelling but it's one of those more difficult concepts to wrap your head around unless you're very familiar with the topic. Obviously you are in that case. I think the last question maybe I'll just frame for both of you: as you've started to bring in that additional data from the IoT devices at a higher velocity, different variety, higher volume, and you start learning with AI and machine learning, are there any unique customer insights that you'd be willing to offer—without any competitive intelligence or learnings that you guys have would like to share with the group?

So Michael, I would say, you know, not all data is created equal. So as you look at the data, you want to be very, very selective which data you keep, which data you use right away for insights. And I'll give an example. We have sensorized our vessels that we use in offshore construction and other installation activities, and we collect a lot of data from all equipment on the vessel. But we are very selective what data we bring back and we store for longer time versus what data we actually at the vessel site use algorithms to generate insights, because data becomes a liability over time if you're not using it the right way.

That's great. Both of you guys on that answer, I appreciate it. Danielle taking a really customer-oriented perspective, not using technology for the sake of technology but trying to address a pain point or capitalize on opportunity. Vagesh, totally, that goes right in with our enterprise data lake and making sure that high-quality, high-value data is what we go after. So Danielle and Vagesh, really appreciate your time. This has been a great panel, and thank you for your willingness to join us.