The community of customers, users and IT specialists from Eastern Europe using the business solutions of the Swedish company IFS met at the end of May at the IFS Connect event in Krakow, Poland.
Their solutions for enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise asset management (EAM) and enterprise service management (ESM) are established primarily in the engineering, metallurgical, mining, energy industry, transport, aviation, but also in the defense sector. New trends resonated at the event, primarily the implementation of artificial intelligence in corporate IT systems and, of course, the increasingly advanced use and analysis of IoT data, including scenarios for their use to strengthen competitiveness.
The countries of Central and Eastern Europe are mainly focused on production, so their requirements are aimed at its optimization and also at planning the maintenance of production and logistics equipment. This makes them different from, for example, the Nordic countries, they are also strong in production, but focus more on service management. However, the dynamics of the processes are the same in all regions, as well as the requirements for solutions that can be easily adapted to changes. This is also why 80% of customers use or migrate to a cloud solution that brings significant updates and improvements at least twice a year. The improvements are related to the implementation of AI, the most efficient connection with the IoT to obtain the most accurate information for effective predictive maintenance. Information on costs to ensure sustainability and minimize environmental impact is also important. Well-planned and organized logistics enable the minimization of the volume of stocks, which tie up resources and their storage also increases costs.
Resource planning and process management work with current operating data that is collected directly from sensors and transferred to the information system. To transform this data into valuable information to support decision-making, AI-based software comes into play, enabling the processing and analysis of vast amounts of unstructured data from heterogeneous sources in real time. AI is used, for example, to predict seasonal demand, which is highly variable and depends on various factors, some of which are very difficult to predict.
Monitoring the state of production or logistics equipment, or means of transport using IoT sensors brings significant benefits in the form of savings in maintenance and service costs. Such a system makes it possible not only to plan a periodic preventive service, but based on data from sensors that indicate a potential problem, to carry out a service intervention and thus prevent a problem that would result in an interruption of operation and associated losses, not only financial, but in many cases also loss of reputation if the company does not deliver products to its customers on time. Based on the analyses, it can also be determined whether a potential failure would be critical and whether a service intervention, such as replacing a problematic part, needs to be performed as soon as possible, or it can be scheduled for a suitable time, for example after the end of a work shift.
Collecting data within a production or logistics hall is not such a difficult matter. However, many companies have their resources spread over a larger geographical area. Typical examples are transport and agriculture. An example of a large company supplying agricultural farms with fertilizers and plant care products was presented at the event. Thanks to sophisticated information systems, they do not wait for orders from farmers, but analyze satellite images of their fields and, based on the results, not only supply them with adequate fertilizers and chemicals for plant treatment, but also provide them with data on which fields or parts of them need to be fertilized or treated intensively and which less, or at all. In other words, a large agricultural company has at its disposal technologies that especially medium and small farmers cannot afford, but in this way they can profit from them. The satisfaction is mutual, the investment in advanced solutions will also pay off for the agribusiness, it will strengthen its competitiveness, because farmers, of course, will prefer a supplier that provides added value together with the products.
The ever-widening functionality of corporate information system applications, mainly thanks to AI, is outwardly manifested by simplifying their use, which will be appreciated especially by companies that do not have experts in the relevant IS. However, they cannot do without specialists when implementing, integrating with other subsystems, or migrating systems to the cloud. The mentioned tasks require high specialization and experience of IT teams, which only large companies have. For companies that do not have such specialists, the solution is consulting companies as implementation partners. Of course, their services are not cheap, but given the shortening of implementation dates and the use of their experience to optimize systems and adapt them to specific conditions and processes in a given company, they are definitely worth it.
Source: www.nextech.sk
