Energiforum is an opportunity for IFS customers in the energy and utilities industry to meet, exchange ideas and hear about each other’s future plans. With approaching 80 attendees, the Energiforum 2015, held early this year in the Clarion Hotel & Congress Airport, was as always a lively affair. New and mature IFS customers plus software partners of IFS like Novacura, DinERP and XMReality to discuss all manner of innovation in enterprise asset management (EAM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and service management software.
In terms of innovation, our ongoing work with augmented reality is now really advanced, including real-life scenarios of how it can be used in asset intensive industries. Let’s say a technician/engineer is sitting at the top of a wind turbine and needs deep technical guidance. What better way to do that than through a device like Google Glass, as what they see is translated into step-by-step assistance from an expert who could be anywhere in the world.
We also enjoyed presentations on much of the new energy and utility industry functionality that IFS Research and Development has built. This includes a new scheduling and resource allocation solutions for traditional asset-intensive EAM customers. The maintenance planning board is an extension developed with a customer that needed to solve resource optimization issues across multiple sites and factor the ever-changing operational demands on the installed asset base into the planning.
Integration between IFS Applications and Esri ArcGIS Server bringing geographical- and business system data together in one integrated solution.
The latest GIS Integration and linear assets functionality was demonstrated as well, and this is receiving huge interest. This integration has been recognized by Esri for a Special Achievement Award due to its technical design and how it allows users to seamlessly move between the enterprise solution and advanced mapping software products. It is a continuation of the visualization theme promoted by IFS wherein aspects of the business application are presented in a highly graphical way to enhance user experience. The way in which this integration has been technically built means that it can be extended to other business objects within the IFS Applications. For example you can view the location of all of the ‘Incidents’ reported from the health, safety and environmental (HSE) solution or the location of all of your sales opportunities from the CRM module—with all details represented in the GIS Map.
Other topics included presentations from new energy and utility customers discussing why they chose IFS Applications, partner organizations showing complementary solutions and products such as mobile apps. The IFS Mobile Work Order solution was presented as an important offering to the energy sector.
And finally, we discussed internet of things (IOT), and more importantly showed how IFS and partners like ABB are actually implementing real business benefit solutions into power plants and other industries. This convergence story of IT / OT will be further explored at the IFS World Conference in Boston. Hope to see you there!
