With IoT comes in a new wave of data streams and to parse that data, you need powerful industrial analytics tool. If you are from the data science stream, you couldn’t agree more with the founders of Neewee, Bangalore-headquartered startup that provides industrial and procurement analytics solutions. At the heart of their success is Athena – IoT enabled platform that features a built-in, deployable domain specific advanced analytical models. Speaking to IoT India Magazine, Nataraj Soorkod, Co-Founder & CTO shares how Internet of Things (IoT) has made its way into every aspect of life and why big and small enterprises alike should bet big on IoT.
The two-year-old Neewee’s biggest recognition came earlier this year when they were selected for Airbus BizLab accelerator programme. So how does Athena, the analytics delivery platform work in the industrial context? “Athena, the analytics delivery platform which is modular, open source based and is designed on micro-services based architecture. It has pre-loaded Analytics algorithms, an easy to use model configurator for quicker and adaptable implementation of models. Both our Industrial Analytics and Procurement Analytics solutions are delivered through the same. The platform provides seamless integration with the existing IT landscape of the customers,” Soorkod shared.
Neewee’s industrial analytics diagnoses issues with industrial assets
Imagine an analytics platform that can predict the future state of your new plant floor equipment and industrial assets. Athena does just that by giving a peek into industrial equipment such as electric motors, gear boxes and many more. The advantages are multi-pronged — a) significantly reduce the risk of unplanned downtime; b) utilities like Asset and Model configurator enable management to keep a tab on future state of assets; c) and most importantly it enables management to take remedial actions.
The usage is not just limited to industrial settings. Soorkod reveals though majority of their pilot implementations are in the industrial space, as a platform Athena can be generally used within supply chain as well. “For CPOs, Athena provides an integrated way to optimize the procurement function. This end to end solution consists of enablers, data quality routines, BI Solution, an Advanced Analytics module and Procurement Fraud Analyzer. All these components heavily use Machine Learning and NLP Algorithms,” he shared.
Applying AI and machine learning capabilities to IoT
There is absolutely no doubt that machine learning algorithms help achieve unparalleled efficiency, especially in IoT. Neewee’s industrial grade analytics solutions help organizations improve production efficiency by analyzing machine data and applying predictive models, in the case of detecting machine failure.
Predictive maintenance: how raw IoT data collected from sensors is turned into actionable insights through AI
1) By looking at historical patterns, we profile failures and events leading to those failures.
2) Sensor data along with additional organizational data like asset history, failure and service requests, and maintenance and work orders is used for analyzing the events thus identifying potential failures before they occur.
3) Physics based models tied along with the problem patterns help in predicting failures before they occur, hence reducing the unplanned downtime.
4) Understanding of behavior of assets coupled with application of right machine learning models will lead to effective Industrial Analytics implementation.
Airbus Bizlab: Neewee’s breakthrough moment
Making the cut in Airbus Bizlab’s accelerator programme has opened up a world of possibilities for the young startup, staffed with 16 employees who are a “good blend of youth and experience”. According to Soorkod, the key takeaways from Airbus Bizlab 6-month acceleration programme wouldn’t just be the much-coveted access to Airbus decision makers, venture capitalists and Airbus partners, but also developing ground breaking use case for the aerospace sector. “We along with the BizLab team will identify departments within Airbus that could be interested by our solution and develop at least one use case for the aerospace sector, if not more,” noted Soorkod.
IIoT Analytics – an extremely crowded space
Of late, there has been a lot of frenzied activity in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) space with a clutch of companies, small and big alike rolling out industrial analytics solutions for specific verticals. Some startups offer very granular solutions, applying blazingly fast machine learning algorithms to solve problems and make industries more agile. Industrial giants Siemens and GE Digital are maintaining the lead in marrying IIoT analytics and delivering a standardized platform for collecting, integrating, analyzing and securely managing data. According to Bain consultants, analytics vendors should develop targeted solutions for few industries, align with industry-specific partner and develop domain expertise in that specific vertical.
According to Soorkod, the answer lies in their model which is both scalable and intuitive. “We believe that depth of our Physics and Statistics based models create a good differentiation with the competition coupled with Athena which is scalable and intuitive to use in industrial as well as procurement domain. Both our solutions are end to end and hence it is much faster, seamless from the customer perspective,” he said.
