According to IFS, Resolve is the “first of many” new solutions the company is bringing to market to promote AI in industrial environments. The new solution, which is the result of the IFS Nexus Black program launched earlier this year, is the result of a collaboration with Anthropic.
IFS has been talking about AI for years, just like almost everyone else in the market. However, the company operates in a market where it’s not so much about copilots and other trendy new AI-related innovations. As a rule, it does not blindly follow hype. This is partly because it does not see the point of it, and partly because it simply does not have the resources to do so. Focus and concrete applications are the magic words.
Today, at an event organized specifically by IFS around the use of AI in industrial environments (Industrial X Unleashed), the company announced its first new solution from IFS Nexus Black. This is an IFS program that focuses specifically on developing new AI solutions. Resolve was developed in collaboration with Anthropic and uses the Claude language model.
What does IFS Resolve offer?
Resolve is an additional tool for technicians in virtually all of IFS’s focus areas: Aerospace & Defense, Energy, Engineering & Construction, Manufacturing, Telco, and Transportation. It does what its name suggests: it solves problems that people encounter in the field of Field Service Management (FSM).
With the help of IFS Resolve, it should be possible for technicians and other personnel to do more than just react. It should enable them to predict problems and errors earlier. It does this by jointly analyzing and interpreting things such as video, audio, temperature, and pressure. By linking this to blueprints and designs, for example, it should be able to indicate when maintenance is needed in a timely and, above all, proactive manner.
IFS Resolve should also offer added value in maintenance planning. Since it is now easier to identify the problem, it is also easier to send the right technician. This should ensure a faster solution to the problem for customers of organizations. However, it also helps to optimize planning. Here we see the added value of AI for PSO (Planning and Scheduling Optimization) that we discussed with IFS a few years ago.
In addition to predicting current and urgent malfunctions and errors, IFS Resolve should ultimately also make it possible to prevent future malfunctions and errors. That is ultimately one of the most important uses. Proactively detecting and resolving an error is great, but it is always better to ensure that no error occurs in the first place.
More whiskey and gin…
IFS is not known for launching new products on paper. That is also the case with Resolve. During Industrial X Unleashed, IFS is therefore providing a platform for William Grant & Sons, the maker of Grant’s whiskey and Hendrick’s gin, among other products. That company shares its initial impressions and results after it started using Resolve in its production enviroments.
This company reports that it has achieved significant gains by using Resolve. Before its implementation, 38 percent of technician deployments were for emergencies. This led to a lot of downtime. After Resolve implemented the factory designs and provided access to data from existing sensors, everything runs much more smoothly, according to the company. In fact, it expects to save over £8 million by taking a much more proactive approach than before.
…less damage from natural disasters
However, Resolve is not just about producing more whiskey and gin. According to IFS, the solutions developed by IFS Nexus Black in collaboration with Anthropic also offer new opportunities in combating natural disasters.
The company does not attach a specific use case to this, as it does with whisky and gin. However, it does claim that gas and other services can be restarted more quickly after a storm, forest fire, or flood. This process could be 40 percent faster than would be the case without the solutions developed by IFS Nexus Black and Anthropic. Here, too, there is a proactive, predictive component. There is also an element that focuses on solving problems quickly.
In our opinion, it is a bit of a guess whether that 40 percent is really realistic, because there is no clear use case attached to it. Nonetheless, more and, above all, better insights will undoubtedly lead to better solutions to these kinds of problems.
Resolve strengthens leading position of IFS in FSM
IFS has long been one of the leaders in FSM. What IFS does may not be particularly sexy or hip, but it is undoubtedly functional. For Anthropic, a collaboration with IFS in this way is also very valuable. It shows that Claude can also offer added value for very practical matters. That is certainly important in a time of AI hype.
Most of the industries that IFS focuses on are not interested in lofty promises and dots on the horizon. They are fairly conservative and often still extremely busy with previous transitions. These include moving to the cloud and merging ERP systems after countless mergers and acquisitions. If IFS can deliver on the promises it is making with the above examples, there is still a long way to go. We are very curious to see what else will come out of the collaboration between IFS Nexus Black and Anthropic.
The photos for this story were taken by Adrian Bridgwater.