IFS may be Sweden-born and UK-headquartered, but the EAM vendor has obvious global aspirations. The biggest symbol of these ambitions its it flagship event, IFS Unleashed, which is coming around again this October 14th-18th, as based in its usual setting of Orlando, USA.
The key difference this year for IFS this year though – bar a new CEO in the form of once-CCO Mark Moffat – is the messaging. Unleashed is very much touted by IFS as the untethering of Industrial AI for its partner and customer community, tying in with Moffat’s AI-heavy signals upon taking the top role from Darren Roos at the start of this year.
The mantra during the Roos era was “The Moment of Service”. Like any new CEO, Moffat will want to make his mark at IFS Unleashed, especially in this so-called age of AI that is defining the decade. Likewise, there needs to be clear continuity under his tenure, especially from the customer perspective. This means the Moment of Service arguably should remain the mantra, no matter what technological changes are happening in the market.
In an upcoming cover story interview with ERP Today, Moffat agrees, noting that on the artificial intelligence front, he sees the Moment of Service as including an “obligation and responsibility to make sure we play a part in enabling our customers’ AI journey.”
Moffat meanwhile defines Industrial AI as the service management “moment” augmented by an AI-based scheduling and optimization engine. Here, GenAI is just one aspect of the IFS Industrial AI offering. Just as relevant – if not more so – to his customer base, Moffat says, are capabilities in anomaly detection and forecasting, with optimization opportunities available for plant and capital-intensive sites.
Through IFS Cloud, heavy data can be captured from asset-heavy orgs: from pressure gauges, temperature and other sensors, collected across wind turbines and more. Said data can be aggregated with use cases applied to it, accentuating a “super compelling” ability to create long-term innovation cycles in AI, to quote Moffat.
Looking at the IFS Unleashed program, one finds AI-heavy keynotes from Boomi, PwC, MIT CISR experts and more. There’s also mention of an IFS City showcasing real-life examples through six companies from the same amount of industries, all demoing IFS.ai.
PwC, a key IFS partner, also pops up more than once on the agenda – find out the consultancy’s role in the IFS ecosystem in our upcoming cover story feature with Mark Moffat, as he explains the role and value of IFS partners for the vendor as it stands today in this age of AI.
