Meir and Tom Givon with GIV Solutions

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Hexagon Live, GIV Solutions, asset management, change management, critical infrastructure, smart cities, integration, redundancy, operational efficiency, technology adoption, customer success, innovation, project management, digital transformation.

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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 Well,

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because you're a seasoned professional and you've been around for a long time. Yes,

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quite how

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and I watch, I have the next generation. Now you have the next generation. But here Tom,

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but with with a lot of experience, a lot of earning his place and proving himself with the most complex projects of metro line in Tel Aviv metal and in Jerusalem, which are great successes, and the world winning also. Let me ask

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you this. And this is, this is off topic. So we, we come to this event, we come to hexagon live. We hear about all of the incredible innovation. It's happening. It's, it's amazing. It seems like it's it's on steroids. It's just going so fast. How do you deal with the fact that technology is is going at this clip, but adoption, humans, people, the that part, can't keep up. There's a gap. How do you deal with that? It's

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a great question, because we have answers that we implement and practice day to day. We have, unlike most of the IT companies, technology companies, we have inside in house, a branch that deals with change management. Change management is about psychology, about taking and merging the people of the customers unions to understand the value and for them you. And the empowering that they will get from implementation of those technologies, and therefore where the toughest customers can be, like ports, railways, municipalities, in all those with full, successful projects, turnkey, on time, on budget, getting and taking for the ride, for the journey those unions, those workers, while they understand and they're really empowered, we train them, we make them able to modernize themselves, to make themselves more experts and to work with better tools, and we show them, each one, from the technician to the department manager to the VP to the CEO, how they will gain, how they will improve, and the power their management, how they will Reduce Risk each one in every level and perform much better, and therefore will be successful. And therefore they become friends, partners to the road. They're choosing us again and again. And the rumor is spreading, and there is like from mouth to ear, adoption of our solution.

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Here's you mentioned one, critical infrastructure businesses, rail, you know, roads, they they're not known for being nimble and and,

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yes, let me tell you what's what they are and what in everyone you can see here all the type of organizations, from smart cities to smart campuses of education, real estate, smart hospitals, energy, utility with water, railways, highways and bridges that has to be managed, road management and what, what, what is together, what, what is connecting different industries. I had an insight. Because, as you say, you are many years on the road. I got the expertise and the insight, saying that when you talk about intensive infrastructure, organizations threaten infrastructure and assets intensive that provide services, you're in a different world than manufacturing. The ERP is not the best solution for them, no, actually, is, is quite worse solution. Why? Because they are focused on planning the product, manufacturing, the product distribution, distributing the product. When you talk about services, there is nothing about that. When you talk about municipality service, you have crowd your tenants, your people, your communities and but yes, all of those with the infrastructure has the infrastructure. So they have in common the life cycle management and intelligence and challenges of maintaining best practice, or I say state of good repair. Yes, the American slogan of that this is in common. So we use Hexagon in all of them as the platform, and we take, then this basic that this is common on, let's say most, if not all, the partners of hexagon ally and the director selling the am for asset management, facility management and asset lifecycle management, we say, of course, this is trivial. This is the basic but now, what is your organization doing? You are a CEO of railways, so you are looking for a maintenance system, or you are looking to have a comprehensive, holistic management tool that will ease your life, will reduce risk, and will make your teams and all departments working homogeneous way look on the same data, on every single data, to manage it once and share it everywhere and create the internal processes that cuts Over departments, over silos, and suddenly we are considered a wonderful company, wonderful solution. And I would say, discover. We changed. We changed the conversation.

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How, how? How will Okay? Let's say. I'm real, I'm real, I'm a real guy. Yeah, that's where I work. And I work with you guys because you're a partner in my success. That's what I'm doing. Yes, now Ali is not Ali anymore. It's it's octave, yes. How does that impact me? How do you help me understand that that's a good move for my business.

10:21

Okay, so first of all, we have to understand that this was initiated from hexagon internal point of view. So what I think there was at the end, it's specifically, you know that, and I'm talking about an expert in it, and experienced guy about understanding how enterprises are evolving and developing. You have hexagon bought EAM from yep four yep and added it to several software companies that they had several software Solutions that they bought from other companies. So there is, you have, like a family of Solutions. And then you get Hexagon ALI, which is a monster relative to others. It's much bigger. And then you create what is called COVID, like a gravity center saying, Wow, I have all the hardware and all the instruments on Leica and on hexagon, on the robotic and all the engineering hardware and technologies, And I have a significant weight of software, of organizational software, let's spin it off. Let's create a business opportunity. Yeah, I'm now, like an analyst from the market, but

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you have to be as part of your business,

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like explaining what I understand they need. Yeah. But now to your question, okay, what will be the change? The change will be that SIG division had Solutions at the head markets of, for example, cities, not the smart cities, but Safe Cities and geospatial, etc, and it was separate from the airline. It was separate from the aim. And it was a little bit complicated to work on, separate divisions, separate profit centers, separate managers with the egos, right? And now you combine it to one company, and you align everyone to the targets. And then you get the infusion, the fusion, fusion of all the knowledge, the expertise, the tools, the Solutions, it will accelerate the solution, the quality and the go to market. But then this is the answer.

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I'm real guy that's just going too fast for me. I'm trying to keep up with it. I'm still I'm still trying to succeed at the solution that I

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have. What is written

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here, it's just transforming into your future, transforming you into the

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yeah, no, that's good that you need a stable hand on this journey, and, and, and it would be easy for me, real individual, to be overwhelmed by all of the the. The chirping and the conversations out there that shiny object, why? It'll make it even better for me and and be able to to understand us, you know, a steady hand in all of this, because it can be overwhelming. Yes, it could be drinking from a fire hose and like,

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oh, I guarantee you one. If I'm a customer, I'm that real individual. I want stability. I don't want drama. That's one. And I want to be able to enable change when you decide to Yes. And I want to be associated with individuals I trust that removes so much anxiety that, you know that I can, as a as a user of the technology, I don't have to deal with that, because a lot of people have to, because they, you know, they might just see somebody out there who is hanging a shingle, who's saying, we do this. I'll GIV you AI. There are so many people out there that say, I do AI, whatever that means they do it. But do you trust them? Do you think they're going to help you along on that journey? Do you think you're going to succeed at the end of that, that journey, that's that's questionable. I would be concerned.

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but see, this was interesting. One last question. And then Tom, we're going to be talking a little bit about some use cases, some some examples, and then we're going to pause it, and we're going to get Tom inning miked up, and then we're going to do it again. But you're also nimble. I don't have to go through some bureaucratic type of, you know, meat grinder to find somebody to help me with my problem or my challenge or my desire to do whatever I need to do. Your organization moves it moves quickly and and provides that to my satisfaction. That's how I see it. Yes,

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but you're right, and there are many, most of the customers, we are engaged directly, contracted to them and work directly with them. There are cases on mega projects that, like groups are set and and it is defined to work through an ICT integrator. Almost every ICT company that we met wants to work with us because we are enablers. Also for them, we bring the brain. It's like Intel inside for the PCs, yeah, yeah, it's like, GIV Solutions inside. Without this solution, they don't matter because ICTs are many. Many can provide the hardware, the communication, the cybersecurity, etc, but those this digital brain for those organizations specifically, we are quite unique. And therefore we work with partners. We work with ICT, because we provide only the software, or either the organization, the customer itself, has a powerful IT department says, Okay, I bring the server, I bring everything. You just bring the software, or many times it says, Okay, I want a full solution, and then come with an ICT integrator to deliver what you don't deliver. And in this case anyway, we take full responsibility back to back, turnkey delivery and support later to the directly to the end customer. But the contract may be through an ICT hexagon, for example. Oh, I got you. I got you. Okay, yeah. May bring a customer and say I'm in the front. Okay? And you actually do know, when we have such customers together with

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Meirror? See, he knows what he's talking about. Definitely no other GIV Solutions. We're going to, we're going to switch it out. We're going to bring in Tom. So stay tuned. We will be right back. All right. Welcome back. We're here once again, hexagon live. We're on the zone, right here, in the zone where it's just a collection of people who are just solving problems. And then, you know, mad technology, mad innovation. Now we're talking to Tom. GIV Solutions is the company. Tom is what's your

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role now? I'm the Global VP of Marketing and Solutions. Global VP

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marketing Solutions. Yeah, he knows what he's talking about. How you doing? I'm good. I'm having a good show,

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definitely. Very excited event, very nice, amazing people. I thought I was pretty intelligent until I saw who I'm. Up against you.

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It's pretty incredible when you get right down to it, man, because I I feel the same way, like really, that's why I could, that's why it's great to be on this side of the microphone, because I can just continue to learn from people like you and others that that definitely have the fingers on the pulse of what's taking place. So that's cool, by the way. So GIV us a little background on Tom, who you are, and then take us some, GIV us some opportunities to see what GIVs Solutions is doing with these Solutions.

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So the light rail, yeah, what's, what is a light rail versus a rail versus

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a rail. So it's essentially, it's what you would call a tram, maybe, oh, okay, the US sure it goes on the street so it has, oh, okay, okay, yeah. This like in San Francisco, there are carts, right? It has different challenges, because heavy rails usually are more, let's say more deep engineering, mechanical engineering and light rails have the bigger integration issues because they are running on the roads, essentially. So there are the issue of how they integrate with traffic. How do you provide the best service in terms of not having, you know, traffic congestions and not increasing the risk on the road for the people, etc, etc, yeah. And then after being a project manager for about two to three years, I became the in the role that I am today, and it's been a hell of a journey. And in GIV we basically, we sort of transform in the different projects that we do. We had the fortune of being a part of Israel, really latest, let's say, growth spurt, with several big bot project, build, operate, transfer projects, some of smart cities. So essentially, new towns that are created from the ground up as smart cities. So everything is monitored, everything has cada all the elevators, all the pumps, hydraulics. Everything is controlled, and we provide the system that really holds everything together, that makes everything work in harmony, that integrates to dozens of different systems, just to have a place where, in the end, the guy or the woman who is in charge of, let's say, operation, can see The whole picture of everything in one place

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was that implementation. It

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was the longest part was the design stage, because it was ahead of an integration to do with a lot of different systems, a lot of different departments. It was about two years of integration and of a story of design, and then it was about a year or a bit less, maybe 10 months of implementation, and then long step of assimilation with the users. So about a year or two years of assimilation after going live with the software.

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Wow,

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yeah, that's, that's a, that's a long tail. Yeah. And where do we stand with that? Well, how is it, how is it performing?

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life cycle of each cadet, the cadet, the cadet individuals.

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So if I'm a cadet in the Israeli National Police Academy, I'm coming to the gate. This is my first day. I have a policeman card, I put it in the access control. The Access Control transmits to our system who this person is, which course he belongs to. Is he a detective? Is he a beat cop? Is he whatever? Where does he sleep? Does he has any dietary requirements? Is he vegan? Is he Kosher or whatever? Right? And then we synchronize the entire activity so we know which classes he needs to be and when. And we notify the logistics department to prepare everything. So if you need to do some investigating class and they need, yeah, so everything is managed in our system, which is, again, as I mentioned, completely out of the traditional am,

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yeah, but you can, I can see how that Cadet is an asset. Is it that, you know, you just, it's, it's a human asset, but you can treat it as an asset with certain responsibilities, and, and, and you got to monitor that asset Exactly. And I would imagine, I would imagine, correct me if I'm wrong, as a cadet goes through their training and is tracked closely, I would imagine the individuals there's a higher level of success, competence, quality,

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yeah, definitely. The whole, the whole thing, runs very, very smoothly in terms of, think about when you were in campus or something, and think about all the idle times where you come to a classroom and maybe it's not ready, no, maybe they see wasn't off, wasn't answered. We prevent all of that. We that we make the entire organization proactive. We know the system, know the system alerts what's going to happen to all the relevant people, and everything runs smoothly. Yeah, that's, that's and that's good. And regarding the red line of Tel Aviv, which is also an amazing project, it was the first metro line in Israel,

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which surprises you? Yeah, come on, it does surprise. There you have it.

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It's fairly new again. The benefit of that is that it was built smart from the ground up, yeah, because it's not, you know, it's not a legacy project, it's something new. So we are there as the main operation and maintenance system. We are integrated, I believe, to 18 different systems that monitors different subsystems. So just imagine a pyramid of integration, and we're at the top. And we are where everyone looks when they want to know how are things running. We manage the entire KPIs, the entire operation, indicators and numbers of what's going on, we know how late are the trains, what the percentage of punctuality? What's the percentage of availability of the train? Because we integrate to the signaling system. We know what's going on in terms of maintenance, because we integrate to all the different SCADA, whether it's power facility, ticketing, you name it, we integrate to the ERP for financial general ledger. And you know, the financial side, it's, it's amazing. And this project was highly complicated with seven different contractors, each one doing different types of work. So one for signaling, one for rolling stock, yeah, one for systems. And without us, really, I doubt that this would have gone live. It's it was completely it was very complicated. We were the enabler of that integration. And it's live right now. It's live right now. So is it cloud based? No, it's on it's on prem. Oh, on prem. It's a critical infrastructure. They Ah, there you go. That was a limitation. That's also a closed network, by the way. So

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now, with being on prem, what do you do with updates?

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So do that, so we have to physically get there, it can be either via secure connection, if that is possible with the cyber team or on site. We have our team. We can go on site

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normally. These updates require you to shut that thing down. How do you take an active system like what you talked about, sure shut it down, update it

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Yeah. So the answer to that was in the design. It was designed to be 100% redundant. Ah, when you think about the different challenges we have in Israel, this is one of the things we take into account. So this is. Is actually installed twice. Not just our system. Everything is actually installed twice with a live, live configuration. So if some if an instance slowed down, we have the different one in a different location running. That's pretty cool. It's cool. It's a very, very, very complex and interesting project.

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it is. You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

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Yep, Meirror Tom, right there. GIV Solutions hexagon live

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Los Vegas,

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the great event walking around. You should check out some of my videos real time, on the floor, in the zone. It was there's a lot going on. It's really geeky, and I love to see this in action. So go out. Reach out with Meirror. Reach out to Tom. Find out more about GIV, because they are really doing some incredible stuff. That's what they're about. All right, couple of things. One, we're starting the industrial News Network. Be on the lookout for that. We're going to try to really try to speed the news up in the world of industry. That's our goal. We want you to get as much information as you possibly can, as quickly as you can, so that you can be a success. That's what we're all about. There you go. Something new. Love it. All right. Be bold. Be brave. Dare greatly. Hang out with me or Tom, and you know what? You will be changing the world. We're going to have another great conversation coming from hexagon a lot, so stay tuned. You.