Arguably, Covid-19 is one of the biggest challenges for every industry. The abstruse part is that it brings several other challenges along with it. Irrespective of the region and business, it has affected everyone extensively. Founded in 2012, Flutura, an AI Solutions company is also tackling some similar challenges. At present, the company’s major challenge is the decline in industrial activity and general market shock’. Due to Covid-19, there is an abrupt pause in the critical technology projects, the fear is that this will further lead to insufficient development or partial implementation, thus hampering the industrial AI progress.
AI is helping industries grow at a massive speed especially with arising confinements across industries due to COVID-19. Founded by the dynamic trio of Krishnan Raman, Derick Jose, and Srikant Muralidharan, The company focuses on achieving operational excellence across industries through asset uptime reliability and operational efficiency. As a technology company, it serves various clients from varied backgrounds such as Oil & Gas, Process Manufacturing, and OEM.
Preparing To Combat the Situation
Presently, the oil industry is under twin assault from the demand destruction caused by Covid-19 and a price war between key global producers that have reduced the oil prices. Accompanying Covid-19, other challenges such as mobility restrictions and social distancing, and overall health concerns have hit the Process Manufacturing and disrupted the entire supply chain. Many companies are getting back on their feet and they are paying more attention to enable their operations with digital technology to improve productivity, quality, and most importantly safety.
Taking charge of the current challenges, Flutura has divided all its challenges into the buckets of the mid-long-term effects of COVID and is prepared to combat the situation through strategic business planning.
- In the immediate -term post-COVID, industries will still be facing the challenges of social distancing and mobility restrictions. With Industrial AI, it is planning to negate any such inevitable challenges by using remote monitoring, video analytics, and Other technology-driven solutions for operators to mitigate the adverse conditions and boost workplace safety.
- In the short term, it sees the adoption of digital technologies in the industrial domain is a must-have for survival. It is currently helping a few forward-looking companies achieve fuel affordability through operational excellence with better resource utilization and reduced wastage/rework.
Cerebra: An award-winning IoT platform Â
Cerebra—Flutura’s flagship AI platform creates industry-specific solutions across the value chain of Oil & Gas, Process Manufacturing, and OEM using its vertical-specific digital assistants. The product is configurable at the product and feature level. This helps clients experiment with the product as a ‘plug and play’ platform making it easy to use, be it, field operators or corporate executives. It has self-learning capability and it leverages both domain knowledge as well as technology expertise making it an industry preferred product.
The company gives importance to achieve operational excellence and impeccable quality with the shortest turnaround time. This has helped its clients realize the value of Cerebra within 90 days of installing the product. With the analytical digital twin, clients can simulate different models of an asset to connect the best fit. The digital twin also helps in scaling the solution for a larger base. Flutura was one of the few companies to appear in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for IIOT platforms, it also received the highest ratings (4.8/5) from its customers in Gartner Peer Insights Voice of Customer report for IIOT platforms, 2019. Flutura is currently working on 2 major products. Cerebra Augmented Vision Intelligence is the video-centric approach to enhance the safety of the operators or filed engineers and does quality checks by doing image processing. Engineer’s workbench concentrates on empowering operators or field engineers by bringing data science to engineers.
Understanding the Responsibilities
Krishnan Raman, CEO of Flutura is primarily responsible for understanding the market movement and look after existing customers. The team is on a mission to unlock 1 billion USD worth of value for its customers by 2024 and his role is to ensure that the team achieves it. Efficiency is the common theme of the company and the team is looking to start for the next possible efficiency levers to improve the bottom line and top line. Flutura zeroed on unplanned downtime of heavy machinery and Machine Influenced Process Deviations.
Flutura has 100 plus members who act as the backbone of the company. Especially in the current times, when things are gloomy, the company’s work has become more important than ever. Within a week, the team has developed a feature using Video streams to ensure a safe distance between workers. Currently, the company is busy with two new products, and working on 2 more. Positive customer feedback has kept the team motivated and inspired.
AI Impacting Present and the Future
Over the years, the implementation of AI across the industries has proved to be very impactful. This has been backed by several surveys conducted by credible sources. With time, there is improved data literacy, greater transparency, and a sustained focus on the ethics of AI. Industries are reaping the benefits of AI in terms of reduced operations cost, optimum resource utilization, accurate forecasts, improved customer acquisition to name a few. But it is important to note that different industries are at different levels of AI maturity. For instance, while Oil & Gas is in the AI Proficient stage, process manufacturing is in the AI Ready stage, but OEM is still in the AI Novice stage.
The future of AI will be seen across industries in a very short time. AI will not be an option but only a way to do business with high competition. Currently, Flutura is working with multiple organizations. One of them is an integrated Oil & Gas supermajor (the second largest company in the domain), another one is a major midstream pipeline company, then there is a leading adhesive manufacturer and a leading catalyst manufacturer. Soon, it will be launching Engineer’s Workbench (EWB), its latest product for Industrial engineers. EWB concentrates on empowering operators or field engineers by bringing data science directly in their hands. In a few clicks, they can do the analysis for which they have to rely on external teams.
