Powering Smart Energy Management Driven by AI (ft. Microsoft)

[Host] - Hello, everyone. I am Alicja, Advantech sales director for Central Eastern Europe. It's my honor and pleasure to welcome you today to the session of inner talks brought to you from Microsoft Technology Center in Poland. Thank you all for joining us. Few words of introduction from my side at the beginning. Topic we are going to discuss today is about how to enable smart factories for carbon neutral operations and AI-based sustainable energy management from up to down approach. 

That is the reason why we invited Microsoft, worldwide technology leader, to discuss this hot and most important challenge today. The current rate of climate change requires us to rapidly decarbonize energy sources. At the same time global energy demands continue to rise quickly because living standards increasing. 

Today in our talk discussion will be about how such companies like Microsoft and Advantech organize the strategy about decarbonization and energy saving while the global situation of warming and Ukraine war. More innovation are needed to reduce carbon intensity. Electrification of energy access and systems is one of the most practical ways to upgrade energy systems while lowering emissions and power consumptions. 

However, achieving widespread electrification and the worldwide roll out of renewable energy sources bring us new challenges. Transforming into carbon free industries it's very complex and long challenge. This process should start in digitalization, EMS systems, and DCG systems in factories. So let's begin. 

AI-based Sustainable Energy Management

We all know that the future is unclear. A war in Ukraine, ongoing supply chain and energy issues, shortage of skills and a rapidly evolving financial crisis. In this moment, the big question is, what should we do to make the difference? This drive three main themes for IoT trends appointed by Gartner. As senior IoT and business leaders, you need to prepare to optimize to scale or pioneer. 

My main reason I am showing this slide today because I want to ask you to foresee the trends are changing. These trends are mandatory if you want to save the planet. To optimize resilience, operations, or trust, to scale your vertical solutions product delivery or everywhere, to pioneer customer engagement, accelerated responses, or opportunity. 

In each case, whether you want to optimize IoT systems for greater ability to improve data-driven decision making and to ensure that AI systems retain optimum value in production. A digital immune system combines multiply software engineering strategies to inoculate your solutions against the risk. I trust risk and security management is a trend to reduce managed and also unmanaged risk. 

Cloud is nothing new today but more and more enterprises want to move Cloud discussions away from the technology to focus only on business value, seeking Cloud platforms designed and customized specifically to feed their industry. Scale trend for platform engineering is to stop wasting efforts with complex architecture, hybrid infrastructure, and also lack of skills. 

Scaling everywhere, it doesn't mean that one size fits all. It means that 60% of enterprises will be using five or even more wireless technologies at same time. And trend of super app combines that feature of an app, a platform and the ecosystem in one application. Adaptive AI trend to respond to challenging environments adds to limited training data. 

Personalize the general data. And metaverse can help you to build a reputation for innovation. In 2023, delivering technology will not be enough. We need to plan how to impact of that technology and ensure we meet the needs of our customers, our brand, and whole society. For that, we need sustainable technology. 

Both Advantech and Microsoft not only drive ESG strategies inside their companies, but creating solutions that reduce energy and material use in IoT services enabling sustainability through technologies like traceability, emission management, software, and AI and help customers achieve their own sustainability objectives. After the pandemic, companies are accelerating their overall digital transformation to the how to supply and chain problems. 

More than 85% of leaders believe that smart manufacturing is necessary and more than 90% of leaders believe that effective management of manufacturing operation can significantly improve overall supply chain. The main concern is how to effectively integrate data through the platform and how quickly and easily to operate the system and to connect existing equipment and the new equipment. 

This also changed from the past single point of automation and digitalization to the use of overall intelligent manufacturing platform. The European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, CBAM, will impose tariffs on imported products with high carbon emissions. And countries will compete to declare when they will achieve net zero carbon emissions. 

Carbon reduction in industries should be included in circular economy thinking. Industries should promote low carbon transformation from the perspective of corporate governance. And industrial operations should increase investment and promotion of green processes and equipment such as energy conservation, energy storage, and intelligent system integration. 

Advantech WISE EHS system. This five core solution models provides energy management KPI and AI predictive models to help companies accelerate net zero carbon emissions through system integration in the environment, safety, health, and sustainability. 

Energy savings should start from manufacturing, scaling to each individual worldwide. Our speakers today are Jaroslav Sokolnicki, who is the head of Microsoft Innovation Center in Warsaw. 

[Jaroslav, Microsoft]- Hello, everyone. Thanks for having me. 

[Host]- And Jash Bansidhar, a managing director of Advantech Europe. First of all, Jaroslav and Jash, thank you very much for joining. And special thanks for Microsoft to have the possibility to take Advantech in a talk here in your facility. 

[Jaroslav, Microsoft]- Our pleasure. 

Challenges of Energy Crisis and Decarbonization

[Host]- Thank you. So Jash, could you please introduce yourself, and explain to us how does Advantech contribute in these two main challenges, like energy saving and decarbonization? 

[Jash, Advantech]- Yeah. Thank you, Alicja. Jaroslav, nice to meet you again. I'm very happy to. 

[Jaroslav, Microsoft]- Nice to meet you too. 

[Jash, Advantech]- Yeah. I'm very happy to contribute to this in our talks here in Warsaw. It's a beautiful place, Microsoft Solution Lab and Offices. So I think we are in the right environment to discuss this global challenges that we have. 

I think, as a sector head of the Industrial IoT sector of Advantech, working already 18 years in this domain, I can say that the strategy of Advantech to help the digital transformation for manufacturers and smart city applications is something very exciting which I've seen to accelerate during the pandemic. 

And I'm happy to share today with you some case studies, how Advantech has established solutions together with the Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure to accelerate the implementation and fight the challenges that we have today, like greenhouse gas emission, to manage the temperature rise, as well as the energy reduction and management. 

Because here in Europe, we have big challenge related to the energy crisis that we are facing today. 

[Host]- Jaroslav, can you please introduce yourself and explain us, what is the Microsoft strategy about energy crisis and decarbonization? 

[Jaroslav, Microsoft]- First of all, hello, everyone. It's my pleasure to host Microsoft Technology Center. Its place when we are working together with our partners like Advantech, we have beautiful, the history that in the past, we are working together very, very long. So it's really nice. We're super happy that the company, Advantech, has chosen our cloud for fundamental solutions. 

My responsibility is running the Microsoft Technology Center in East, Central and Eastern Europe. And it's the place when we are together with our customer, and our partners working on some projects. Definitely energy. Sustainability is the main subject today. And so we are working, we are trying to understand the customer opportunities, and customer challenges, and trying to understand how we can help. 

And we are the company who producing some model services, applications, software. And together with the company like Advantech, we can deliver some value, bring some new transformation here. 

[Jash, Advantech]- Yeah, indeed. 

[Host]- Jaroslav just mentioned about energy solutions by Microsoft. Jash, can you please explain to us how Advantech is contributing to energy saving and green solutions? 

[Jash, Advantech]- Yeah, indeed. Thanks, Alicja. Let me highlight in this session, the energy management and the greenhouse gas emission monitoring solution that we have. On the Microsoft Azure platform, we have built the Advantech WISE IoT platform, on which we run solution ready applications like energy management, like carbon dioxide, monitoring solutions, and people safety and health solutions. 

These are EPS already implemented on the platform so that end users, or system integrators can easily deploy them and measure the proof with this proof of concept, the proof of value, and in a few weeks, the return on investment if that is in line of what they expected. And the great, let's say, thinking behind this is that these solutions are out of the box. It's plug and play. 

It is a proof of concept, means that at the end, you still need to optimize some functionality and features to fit your application scenario, but 80% is ready to go. That is helping of course, the quick deployment in the installation in the field, but also, it's easy to reuse across your factories around the world once your proof of concept on smaller scale is made. 

What we try to establish with this app based automation. It's portfolio of several functions within a factory, like energy management, like carbon dioxide footprint, like people's safety, as I mentioned. These are key issues in the current stage so that factories can quickly install them and fight the challenges now, and not after a long period of engineering and discussions. 

And I think the challenge that we have is happening today, and this can accelerate the digital transformation as I mentioned in the manufacturing industry. Alicja. 

[Host]- OK. Thank you for very great explanation for me. Also in my introduction, I explained a little bit what kind of solutions Advantech have for, especially for factories because we need to focus on factories as facilities who are using the biggest amount of energy, and nowadays. My last question for today for you both. 

Everyone, all leaders, are talking about equal partnership. It looks like that this is the most also important trend on the market to get into the final solutions. And to provide the most innovation solutions. My question is for you guys, how you are doing it in Microsoft and Advantech, how you build. Ecosystem, who is your partners, especially I am of course, interested to understand about innovation, like AI. 

What you are doing, and who is your partners in AI for energy saving and decarbonization? Do you have really ready application already we can use, we can introduce to worldwide? 

[Jaroslav, Microsoft]- Broad line of questions, by the way. 

So let me start with my one thought. So in general, I think that if we're talking about this energy savings, not only for manufacturing industries, for everyone. And it's for our planet. It's for our efficiency, so it's what we have to do this. We must. We are the Microsoft, we have some commitment that by 2030, we would be carbon negative, zero waste, water positive, and we build a planetary computer, what is already done, by the way. 

So you can use the planetary computer petabytes of data about our environment. You can use your artificial intelligence outgoing to predict something. Forecasting, and you can use your data in your business, or for saving something. So it's really beautiful, I think. We, as Microsoft, always worked with partners, with partners ecosystem. So our height. 

And of course, for sustainability, and for ESG, the department ecosystem is very important as well. It's the way, how we can cooperate with companies like Advantech for building some solutions on top of our platform, as do IoT and artificial intelligence. 

And the second part is that it's not so easy to measure. We have to know how we can use that fact of data. So we're getting some knowledge, so OK, so how can be more efficient? What kind of part of data we should consider doing some? So we have some regulation ahead of us, and cooperation also with advisory partners who help companies better understand their needs, their important systems. 

And we have device factory, and device, a lot of devices, sensors, which helps us to measure something, to understand at some point. So I think that is the, as we said, is the ecosystem. It's not a single one, that we are the Microsoft have the sustainability. Yes, we have, but still, we need a lot of small pieces, or bigger which will give us the bigger picture called ESG, or sustainability. 

[Host]- OK Thank you. And Jash? 

The Strategy for Energy Saving and Effective Management

[Jash, Advantech]- Yeah. Well, if you look to the Advantech business, we are next year, 40 years on the market, and we started with two core technologies, which was data acquisition. To basically translate the functional value, the physical values into electronics. And the second one was computing. And this business evolved in the past 40 years, including the IoT platform that we developed on the Microsoft Azure Cloud Infrastructure, to app based automation infrastructure and verticals to measure energy and monitor that, and to reduce carbon dioxide. 

Those are the topics that we mentioned before. And how did we do it? It is impossible as a company with a legacy tradition in hardware to bring solution-ready applications into the market. So Microsoft was an important strategic partner on which we have built our WISE IoT platform. 

But additional to that, we decided to co-create solutions with solution integrators in the vertical domains. Because they have the competence, the knowledge about applications in manufacturing in smart cities that we were able to, let's say, digitalize on the app based automation platforms of WISE IoT, and deploy it in real cases in the verticals. 

And this co-creation strategy is what is a next growth engine for Advantech decades to come, because we believe that implementing the solution, you always will need this legacy hardware that we have built over the past 40 years. So the unique value that Advantech can bring, that we are a one-stop vendor supplying the hardware, the Cloud Infrastructure, the apps, and the integration capability by the solution integrators who are specialized in the vertical domain. 

And last but not least, because we are a global company, we have a global footprint in Europe. We are established in all the countries, direct or through partnerships and integrators, so we are always close to the customer, understanding the cultural background, as well communicating in the local languages to make things easier. I think, Jaroslav? 

[Jaroslav, Microsoft]- I think that we together, we're making the world smarter. So can you imagine that the body cell, and you have some instructions? And we're adding software to some kind of device to make them smarter. To collect some data, to predict, to understand something, simulate something. Sometimes, we are talking about the autonomous. It means that the system can decide by itself. 

So it means what we are doing, it's just making the world smarter. It can be energy, can be building, can be everything. We need the device, we have the sensor which give us the proper information, which gives us some information on the algorithms, which help us predict some things. It's pretty amazing. 

[Jash, Advantech]- It is amazing. I think a few years ago, we started to visualize things in dashboards. I think within our own offices, we started to use Microsoft BI, in this case, to build a dashboard. And ongoing, we started to implement AI algorithms to give operators the choice to choose among few scenarios. At the end, they make the final decisions, but the AIs were helping to predict what might be coming in the next few days, weeks ahead. 

[Jaroslav, Microsoft]- I think that it's beautiful that we can predict something. But I think that something like autonomous, that you can teach your algorithm how to react. In case when never happened before. So using the synthetic data and digital twin, you teach the algorithm, and the algorithm can know how to react on some actions. 

[Jash, Advantech]- Yeah. 

[Jaroslav, Microsoft]- It's pretty amazing because it's that it can save the money, but it can simulate every situation for security reasons, and for anyone, by the way. So it means that today, what we can do with the software, with the device, what we can simulate in industrial, metaverse, the physical world. But using the digital data and digital world is pretty, pretty amazing. You can predict some, almost anything. 

[Jash, Advantech]- Yeah. Yeah, it's exciting. The challenge that we have as business leaders is to make the right decisions for the youngsters to come, that we don't make AI the leading force. 

[Jaroslav, Microsoft]- Oh realize the dreams. 

[Jash, Advantech]- Yeah, well. 

[Jaroslav, Microsoft]- Definitely I think that we can help some company realize this. Its dreams. 

[Jash, Advantech]- Yeah. The good thing in AI algorithm, in carbon dioxide, or greenhouse gas reduction is that these algorithms can give factories, factory owners already, insights that their greenhouse gas footprint is too much so that they can decide already in the upstream, and also the downstream, as well as their own greenhouse gas consumption to switch off or switch on certain areas so that they can stay below the legislation that has been set by the European Union and the global community. 

So I think AI will help us to make the right decisions, and to contribute to an intelligent and sustainable planet. 

[Jaroslav, Microsoft]- Definitely, yes. Definitely, and I think if we start now, it's time to build smart, and smart places for our business to predict something to simulate something. First of all, you have to measure. It needs some sensor, you have to collect some data, handle it to then understanding of what is going on the way, AI consuming that part of energy for a world. And how much carbon footprint, I'm emitting. 

So the first is the knowledge about where we are. The second part is the simulate something, how I can help, how I can use, how I can be more efficient. So that part, it's absolutely crucial to have some part of data, and to have some analytic system which helps us understand, like graph, or other part. What is the connection? Where's the code between the data? 

So better understanding of data, giving us the right direction. So yes, I would like to be more efficient with the energy consumption, but it's also great for our planet for sustainability reasons because we are, carbon footprint smaller as well. So it's really great. 

[Jash, Advantech]- And again, technology will save the world, right? Or not? 

[Jaroslav, Microsoft]- Yeah, definitely. It's, depend of the intention, always. But I remember that the discussion about the augmentation of by human, by the computer, artificial intelligence, metaverse, et cetera. I think that as far, everything in the good intentions, that we're using our technology as augmentation of human value, of human mind, brain is good. Because now, it's help us to achieve some next and next calls. 

Today, we are working on some quantum computing, where solving the big problems with flying to the moon, to Mars, et cetera. It's brilliant. So intentionally, if we use the technology for the right way, it's beautiful. Like car, like a computer, like other part of the technologies for us to help us. And the same with the energy, and with the car. 

[Jash, Advantech]- So I think, Jaroslav, it's good that we are sharing this insights, this optimism. 

[Jaroslav, Microsoft]- Yeah. 

[Jash, Advantech]- In our fields of technology because besides the challenges that we have today, like global warming, like energy crisis, like high inflation rate in Europe as well as the war situation, there is optimism ahead, where technology can help us and our leading companies can contribute in fighting these challenges. And I'm very happy to be part here in the Microsoft technology lab to also contribute, and to understand how this team in Warsaw is supporting the industry, the smart cities, to cope with these challenges. So thank you, Jaroslav. I leave, I leave this word to Alicja for the closing. 

[Host]- I am really enjoying this kind of discussion. I don't need to ask any questions. So guys, really, thank you very much for a very interesting discussion. I like it a lot. I hope that people who are listening can learn a lot about Microsoft and Advantech approach. What we as a company, as the leaders, are doing for the planet and just for individuals. So thank you very much, and see you soon. 

[Jaroslav, Microsoft]- Let me just add two words. It's not a job for one person. A job for everyone. So let's do it. 

[Jash, Advantech]- Yeah. We are giving the example by living it, so that others can follow. Thank you, Jaroslav. 

The Value of Digital Transformation

[Host]- Thank you. In current digital world, business ecosystems have become extremely important as digital technologies enable enterprises to expand the reach and scope of their business models. Market leaders revolutionized the level and the intensity of connections among business partners, customers, and all others who participate in the creation, delivery, and capture of the value. 

Digital ecosystems represent how advanced technologies change. The way value is exchanged, what value can be exchanged, the speed at which it is exchanged, and where, and with whom it's going to be exchanged. To navigate the complex and challenging world of digital ecosystems, it's vital to understand them. 

Transforming to manufacturing industry. It's very similar finding pain points and expected gains. Manufacturers step-by-step, restructuring the organization and processes to the support of external domain-focused system integrator, solution, and cloud providers. Globally, more than seven in 10 manufacturers who digitalized their use cases indicated as their top contribution to smart manufacturing, initiatives came from external alliances and partners. 

Co-creation starts from innovation. We do have many startups and scale ups on local markets with creative ideas about energy saving and carbon emissions low down, and also management. Successful story comes from ecosystem. Together with end user, we also need factory core models and co-creation partners to provide the services. 

We welcome co-creation, AI partners, and to mind-focused solution providers to deliver the main solution on WISE platform ecosystem. And the meantime, integrate with AI factory five core models, and all kinds of marketing in the end achievements benefits in ecosystems. Advantech organize an ecosystem and enable to provide all kinds to go to market collaboration, including content marketing, Advantech WISE Global Channel marketing, and many offline activities, like roadshows, training days, and marketing events. 

Thus, partners in ecosystem would get a ticket to enter the market and bring the priority to the ecosystem. Our world has reached a point where society recognizes the planet is under stress, with energy and technology sectors at the fore point of this reckoning. To get ahead of these challenges, we must reduce carbon footprints. 

AI will play a crucial role in supporting the energy industry's goals of achieving a more efficient connected and sustainable future. So what you have to do is to get the value from these trends, to meet this momentum, and bring your future into focus by starting from the strategic objective of your enterprise. 

Such we presented today. Thinking about our planet using eco partnership and saving energy everywhere. Change is a constant, and innovation is mandatory. Of course, change should start from us individuals, but the goal of the inner talk session is to understand how important the energy saving and decarbonization solution change in manufacturing industry can save our planet. 

Thank you for joining. If you want to know more about solutions, contact us.