Eric Thompson with IRISS

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Industrial Talk, asset management, reliability, sustainability, IRISS, E-Sentry, critical electrical assets, condition monitoring, AI assistant, generative AI, maintenance worker, digitalization, sensor technology, cloud integration, CMMS integration.

00:00

Scott. Welcome to the Industrial Talk podcast with Scott. MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots and let's go. All right.

00:21

Welcome to Industrial Talk. Thank you very much for joining the number one, numero uno, industrial related podcast that celebrates you industrial professionals all around the world. Yes, you are bold, brave, you dare greatly, you innovate, you collaborate, you are solving problems each and every day. That's why we celebrate you're just the hero in this story. It is an exciting time to be an industry. You can feel the buzz, buzz in the it's just, it's, it's a great time. And I'm so happy that you've joined and you continue to support this platform. It's only going to get better. That's all it is. And we're going to have in the hot seat. In the hot seat, Eric Thompson. Eric Thompson is with IRISS. E-Sentry is the solution. And I, as I, as I, buzz on over to their website. This is a cool tag, and it and it does. It embodies them, leading safety. They do reliability and sustainability they do for the people who keep the world running. Yes, I can attest to that. That's who they are. They are amazing. IRISS. Go out to IRISS.com. Find out more, because it's a great conversation. Eric just knocks it. Knocks it out of the park. Let's get cracking. Yeah, anything that deals with asset management, reliability maintenance, keeping that asset up and running, that operations just humming along, especially now, if you, if you're just sort of dabbling in the world of asset management reliability, you need to up your game. Need to reach out to IRISS, yeah, big time. All right, a point of business, one Industrial Talk is far more than just a media company. And you need to just, we want you to succeed. We want you to be able to have your opportunity to amplify your message any way, shape or form. Industrial Talk has a team of marketing experts focused on your success, creating the plan that is necessary for you to take advantage of this new, Brave New Economy. I'm telling you, there's a lot going on. Don't miss the boat, and we know exactly what to talk about and how to amplify that message and just keep it rolling. We want you to increase in sales. We want you to have those connections that just only make you succeed. Yeah, that's what Industrial Talk. We have a strong marketing background that you need to consider if you're saying to yourself, Scott, we want to increase revenue. Oh, we're all in. Industrial Talk is here for you, Scott, we want to increase our presence in social media. We're here. We're all for you. And then the best part, if you want to be able to be get some traction at conferences, real conferences, setting up connections at those conferences, sponsoring Oh, there's just so many things that you can do to just up your game. And we, we've, we've, we've done it. So consider Industrial Talk as your marketing arm. There you go. All right. E-Sentry is the solution brought to you by those wonderful people at IRISS. It is really very cool. It's, it's a it's a focus on critical electrical assets and and quite frankly, we don't do that enough. And quite frankly, you only get one bite at the apple if you make a mistake. It's not a good thing anything dealing with electricity. You know, if it's starting to fail and you don't know about it, and you and safety is everything, it bites and it bites hard. As a former transmission lineman, it bites and it bites hard. So you just need everything that you could possibly and this whole digital world that we live in, it's all there. You can assess the health of these electrical assets and stay safe and be able to effectively keep your operations up and running. It's it's a it's a beauty. Thing. It's a beautiful thing. Eric knocked it out of the park. Eric Thompson, IRISS is the company. Enjoy the conversation. Eric, welcome to Industrial Talk. How are you doing

05:10

today? I am good. Scott, how are you? Thank you for asking.

05:15

I'm doing well. I can't complain the weather. The weather is cooperating. There was a time when it was just super you know how it is, you're in, you're in Florida. It just, it's just so oppressive sometime. But now it's, it's nice and cool and dry. It feels like heaven,

05:33

nice. Yes, it's definitely getting warm here, but that just means that all the snowbirds will be leaving soon, so less traffic. So I'm excited about that. Oh yeah, that's right.

05:44

Sara Soto, Sara soda, there you go. All right, cool, yeah. But before we get into the conversation about E-Sentry, that solution, and give us a little background just a who Eric is for the listener,

06:03

yeah, so Eric Thompson, I have lived everywhere. I grew up as a military brat. I was in the military. My current role right now is on the global AI OT, Global Solutions director. That's really

06:19

a mouthful. That's it

06:21

06:52

military service. What did you do? Coast Guard,

06:55

believe it or not, yep, so, so my father went to West Point. He did 30 years. But obviously I did the opposite of what the actual army is, and that would be the Coast Guard. So any,

07:10

any, any friction between you and your dad, like,

07:15

No, not at all. He was just happy that I made that decision. And I, you know, I think most people, if you join the military, you probably need to grow up a little bit. So glad I did that and was able to go to college right after that. So great trajectory for me. Thank you.

07:33

That's a big deal, and I like that a lot. I'm a, I'm a military buff guy. Anyway, I didn't spend any time. I just sort of stayed at a Holiday Inn, and I think that I can sort of talk the military talk. That's all good. All right, let's get let's get into the E-Sentry. The solution. Give us a little breakdown of what E-Sentry is all about.

07:55

08:57

So so you're not talk are you talking about devices that'll be on spinning equipment, or is this specifically geared toward electrical

09:10

assets? So our beachhead right now is for a critical electrical asset. So if you think of any asset that you could apply, an IR window and IRISS IR window. That's where you're putting those sensors. So we have ultrasound, temperature, humidity, vibration, but we also are taking to market a smart window, so we're actually embedding the technology that we've created into the IR window. So now you when you're doing those inspections and you're pulling down that IR window, you're doing your infrared gun. Now you can actually have an embedded sensor that's monitoring that electrical asset, 24 hours, seven days a week, and get alerts off based off that data and thresholds. Huh?

09:58

That's interesting. So your your IR Windows is now a smart IR window. Is that? Is that how I'm looking at this

10:07

correct? Yep. So the next iteration was to we've created the technology, the sensor technology, and we're like, why would we not just like, we have the sensor, but why not embed that into the actual IR window. And so if you So, if you already have our windows, you can retrofit through our sensors, but if you're buying, you know, fresh IR Windows, you can actually get a smart window and then also have the ability to create automatically work orders based off that sensor data.

10:41

So how does that work? This I'm going down the smart side, and I walk by that cabinet, and I have an IR window, but a smart one right now. It has a display, and it's saying here, this is the health of the cabinet right now, real time.

10:58

So what it's doing, it's, obviously has that sensor in there for ultrasound, and it's, it's monitoring, right? You put in in the E-Sentry UI, you're putting in your threshold, and then, based off those thresholds, once it crosses that, you can get notified through the E-Sentry system. So a it's, we have a mobile app that you can get notified, or it's going to be notified through whatever system you know, UI that you're utilizing, if it's your laptop, work, laptop, PC, whatever. So you will automatically get notified, be able to go and now go to that window, open that our window, and do your inspection

11:40

the from a safety perspective, does the the data collection give you some insights into the the severity of the condition, and saying, Hey, don't just go in there and open it up and you know, there's a problem, but you still need to be safe about it. Does that? Does it give that pulling data exactly?

12:06

So if you're thinking about high voltage, and it's extremely dangerous, so the more detail, the more data that's getting analyzed, you can understand the condition of that electrical asset, and then you can make smarter decisions of how to make maintenance that asset. So yes, it's providing that data that making sure that it's providing it, and then you can analyze it, and you're making actionable insights and actions based off that data.

12:38

So I have a cabinet, and let's say that cabinets high voltage. And of course, I guarantee you that cabinet has, it's, it's sort of in a dingy area, and it's, you know, it's not in the most easily accessible area. But let's say, you know, I go there, how quickly can I retrofit that cabinet to be able to begin reaping the benefits from E-Sentry.

13:03

Yeah, great question. So you can actually, we have, it's called the DTU sensor, so you can actually put it right next to that IR window that you have and get the same benefit out of it. So you don't actually have to replace that IR window at all you can. And we're making it where you can actually, you know, pull out that IR window, insert that new sensor, or you can just have a sensor outside that has an auxiliary where you can have it inside to doing the same type of feature and functionality you

13:38

you throw out an acronym, DTR, I think DTU, DTU. So

13:44

it's, yep, it's our delta ultrasound sensor.

13:48

Thank you, because I've stubbing my toe on that, yes, and I was good at it. Listeners were stubbing their toe as well. So once again. So here you have, you have a device, you have a device that's transmitting data. You have a software as a service. Solution goes into the cloud, correct? I would imagine the cloud based. It's not edge. I want to is there an

14:11

edge? So we actually so it. You know, one of the biggest obstacles, I think, in industrial is, can data leave that environment, especially in data centers and some, you know, different type of facilities, right? It's, Hey, you can't touch our network, and data can't leave our facility. So what we have is, so kind of the first is, all right, we want a smart window, but we can't have our data leave the facility. So what we call it is tap the test where you can you're making your maintenance routes. You have your smart window. It's not it's still collecting that data, but it's collecting it on that smart window. So then you go up to that smart window, you tap it, and then you're able. To see all that data through the app, and then you can visualize it. You can email that data. You can send it to download it to an Excel file. So it's the you're digitalizing and capturing that data. You're time stamping that data, but you're not sending it to the cloud. So it's, it's the first step. Yes, we do. So you have so if you don't want to utilize the cloud, but you need to digitalize and get that time stamp, and you're still making those maintenance routes. This is a great first step into your smart, you know, journey into digitalizing your maintenance program. Now, if you can have data get pushed to the cloud, then, yep, we support a lot of different protocols to be able to get that data. And obviously the benefit of getting that data is real time alerts, real time analytics, and even and we also, which we haven't talked about, is we have an AI assistant, so having that real time data, getting that data aggregated to make it actionable. Obviously, there's a ton of benefits to connecting to the cloud, but obviously, based off my experience, you know, we wanted an option where, hey, instead of just going with a notepad and manually writing things down. At least, you can have a sensor that's collecting data that you can still utilize.

16:29

Yeah, you need to put it in the cloud. There are companies that like to keep it on prem, that stuff and do the route, the routes, but, but you're missing out on a lot of great things, which then segues into the AI. So here I am. I'm a company that believes in the cloud, so I'm going to go in the cloud, and so I'm sending that data, that information, to the cloud. I'm getting notified, because that's the benefit of what that solution provides. So I'm getting proactive notifications. Good, bad, ugly is the notification green? Good, yellow, not so good, lead, bad, ah,

17:09

exactly. So we kind of have it in a couple steps, right, based off the sensor, based off you know, what you want to get notified is, yes, you you go in, you set up your thresholds, and you get notification. But you can also create work orders based off those thresholds. So temperature sensor, humidity sensor, it hit a threshold, automatically create a work order. It gets sent to that maintenance individual, they're on premise, and then you go directly to that asset, and that is already created, and they can start filling it out. So does

17:48

the the AI solution provide guidance on how to maintain that asset? So instead of me just going in cold and saying, Hey, got a problem, very binary, good, bad problem. It doesn't give you some indication of saying, Hey, we have an ultrasound issue, something's arc or whatever.

18:13

So our initial AI, and I've been doing this for a long time, where you know AI is there's different flavors of AI. And obviously, everyone that you know right now, the buzz flavor is generative AI, which is amazing. I just, I don't think I've been part of something that is just everything is just moving rapidly and change from a generative AI perspective. So kind of what we're seeing, and what I've seen is what we call, like the silver tsunami, right and here in IRISS, I'm sitting in a nice office right now, but we manufacture right here in Bradenton, Sarasota, the our window. So our operations manager 40 years experience, but we know he's, he's, he's looking to retire, right? Looking to become a snowbird. And so that silver tsunami means that a lot of that tribal knowledge and that just that knowledge that these seasoned folks have, but that's where generative AI comes in. And that's that term maintenance, citizen worker, where I might have someone that's has 10 years experience, but if I have this AI assistant, right? I have a sensor. It notifies me, I go to that asset, and now I can start getting assistance to a maintenance to fix it, to do work orders. I don't have to go run to someone that's more seasoned than me, because I have that AI assistant right at the palm of my hands. And so we're generative AI and especially E-Sentry's AI assistant is, it's, it's skill set agnostic. We, we don't care how, how many years you have you. Have one, you can have 30. It's whatever you ask it, and it's going to provide that information. And really, you know, fulfill those that gap knowledge for any maintenance worker,

20:10

it begs the question, you got to teach that AI platform. You've got to have, you got to populate it with data. You've got to be able to say, hey, a box here, let's say a high voltage box here, critical asset here, yep, either different than the one that's up north and it's cooler and it might not be in a confined space area, or there might be some how does one train that into the model?

20:42

Yeah, great question. So there's multiple so there's already a ton of models out there, right from Google, Gemini open AI to, you know, metas. So there's different models out there. So you based off the information that you're providing these models. And I'm, you know, I have smarter guys that work for me that know this way better, but we're not going to build a model from scratch because that cost a lot of money, but because of this revolution of AI models, we're able to utilize models that are appropriate to Hey, condition monitoring, training this data, this type of data, sensor data, manual data, asset data, and so that's primarily how we're doing. It is just making sure that we are picking the correct model to train our data on.

21:41

It requires history is, yep, does IRISS have a storehouse of historical data? Do you take Company A, company B, I would imagine there's, there's some overlap there that you can definitely leverage data.

22:02

24:13

How does, how does E-Sentry the solution? Let's say my system of record is a CMMS. Yep, system. How does that? How does that sort of fold into that, that platform?

24:29

Yeah, great question. So, we are not a full CMMS, you know, we are a part, like most CMSs, have an asset management you know, they have that solution

24:41

record that, you know, here's my pump, here's my motor, exactly.

24:47

So we want to play nice with everyone, right? We, you know, our we love, and our big advantage is that we make our sensors. We can make whatever sensor we want, right? And that's a big part. Of getting data in. But we, you know, if you are using, you know, another part of a CMMS, and we can integrate to that, right? We want to be simple. We want to be easy. We don't want to be a very complex solution. And I think, with generative AI and this AI agents, you're going to see a lot of those CMMS is kind of start reducing a lot of those features, because now a lot of it's going to be automated. And so it's probably, it's a perfect time for E-Sentry. You know, we we want to be the best of what we do, and that's getting data into E-Sentry, aggregating it and making it actionable.

25:44

Yeah, I see that. I see the benefit. And if that, if there's a scene, if you're agnostic to a CMMS sort of solution, and I'm a company that's invested more than $20 in my CMMS solution, I want to be able to sort of take the advantages of the benefits associated with a third party solution and then be able to leverage whatever CMMS create the work order and attach, attach that information, historical information on the asset, where it's my system of record, gonna be able to do that, huh? Where do you see it going? I mean, what's, what's on the horizon? Because it's changing rapidly and and it's just, it's an exciting time.

26:37

It really is. Um, so that citizen, maintenance worker, I do like, I truly feel like, you know, and where does that come from? So I'll give a little back story is, you know, 20 years ago, if you wanted to create a website, you needed a computer science degree, right? You needed that background. You had to be able to code. And then as years went on, there you have Squarespace, right? You had this drag and drop, low code, no code, right? And it was called a citizen developer, where you could take anyone in your organization and let them own something or create something, and they didn't need a computer science degree. So taking that kind of philosophy and applying it to the citizen maintenance worker. Right now, you have this AI assistant, right? You have these, this, this, these feature sets where you just at the touch of your finger, you can be a seasoned maintenance worker and be able to do tasks that you weren't able to do, just like how we use chat, GPT, or, you know, hugging face. You know, it's, it's amazing. I have a very lean team, but it's amazing what I'm able to do in an eight to 10 hour day because of generative AI. So I just see it where AI is not, you know, I I've heard it, I've read it, and I believe it. AI is not going to replace jobs. It's going to be someone that knows how to utilize AI that's going to replace I

28:09

always look at it from from my perspective, and you, you bring up a good point about silver tsunami. Yep, that tribal knowledge is is going out the door. It is just correct. Yep. You know what? We've been talking about this for years. We just never real way of being able to sort of capture that knowledge and capture that in a way that makes sense for the organization. But I think we were doing it now, and I look at it like a like a recipe. If I'm going to be cooking a casserole, I get a recipe. I don't have to be a chef to be able to make that casserole, but I just follow the recipe and I'm able to sort of make that doggone casserole. And the same thing exists from a maintenance perspective. If you can give the individual, the technician, enough information they have, of course, they have a basic understanding, but if you can give them enough information, then they can do it safely. It's all there. That's, that's, that's the beauty of it. That's the exciting part about it. I think that we're there.

29:09

I agree. I I've been in doing industry 4.0 like, the biggest barriers, and one is affinity to change, right? But another one was, like, re skilling. Re skilling, like, yeah, just, and the solution to that is, is generative AI, it is really, it's, and I hate the word co pilot, because it's but, and that's probably why I use AI assistant. But it is, it's, it is just amazing what, what's happening every day, and just the advances. And I

29:40

was at a I was at a show, and it's augmented reality, putting on some glasses, and then I was looking at a cabinet, and the cabinet, there it is. It's all right, there, ready to go, and it's and it takes you down the road of how to repair whatever that is. I mean, it's you. It's stunning as happening. It's a way of being able to, I mean, you're going to look at from my perspective, and I could be completely wrong, so send me an email if you want, but I think you're going to get greater efficiencies out of what's taking place in the world of technology, out of individuals, so that they could do a lot more with what they have and be more safer, of course, safer. So, yeah, how does somebody get a hold of you? Hey, saying, hey, I want to know more about E-Sentry, and I want to know more about IRISS. And

30:38

go to IRISS.com you can go to our asset management page, Contact page, and just reach out to us, so we are very quick with responding. And would love to a talk about, you know, what challenges and pain points you have, and how E-Sentry, or how IRISS as a product solution company, how can we solve that, and how can we be a trusted advisor for you guys? Are you not on LinkedIn? Reaching out? I am on LinkedIn. Yes. So yep, air talk

31:08

about LinkedIn. Dog,

31:10

very active. Yep. I actually yesterday was international IoT day, so I posted something for that international IoT. I know who knew I actually, I've known that for a while, but a lot of people don't know that.

31:25

Yeah, yes. Charge Absolutely yeah. Well, you, you were absolutely wonderful. I enjoyed this conversation. Scott getting a lot more decentry and the value that it brings to organizations. Really. Well done. All right, listeners, we're going to wrap it up on the other side. We're going to have all the contact information for Eric out on Industrial Talk. So stay tuned. We will be right back.

31:46

You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network?

31:56

Yeah. His name is Eric Thompson. Eric Thompson, IRISS is the company the solution is E-Sentry. And again, I go out to their website. This is just a great quote, leading safety, reliability and sustainability, for the people who keep the world running, that's what they do. There's so many in reliability and asset management space. Their passion, they're driven by that passion, and IRISS is just leading the way. They've got some great solutions, great insights for your critical electrical assets. You got to stay up and safe. Got to stay up and running, but you got to stay safe too, without a doubt. All right, once again, you want high end, high performance marketing, Industrial Talk is here for you. Let's have a conversation. Go out to Industrial Talk.com. Find out more. We've got a team of individuals that are definitely dedicated to your success. We want you to succeed. Be bold, be brave. Dear. Greatly. Hang out with Eric. Change the world. We're going to have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned. You.