Candi Robison and Daniel Rimmasch with IFS Ultimo

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Enterprise Asset Management, IFS Ultimo, asset lifecycle management, CMMS, EAM, cloud-based software, AI integration, mobile solution, data capture, sustainability, workforce retention, predictive maintenance, asset maturity assessment, transparency, industrial insights.

00:00

Hey, it's Scott Mackenzie with industrial talk. Iris is the global leader in electrical maintenance safety, delivering technologies that let team inspect energized equipment safely using closed panel condition based monitoring to reduce risk and downtime. Their patented infrared and ultrasonic inspection windows make it possible to detect issues early boosting reliability and protect the people who keep the operations running. If improving safety and avoiding unplanned failures is your mission, Iris has the solution to get you there. Learn more@iris.com

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you 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.

01:03

All right. Welcome to industrial talk. Thank you very much for joining and your continued support of this platform, this number one, this juggernaut of industrial insights. I just made that up, right? That celebrates industry professionals all around the world. You're bold, you're brave, you dare greatly, you innovate, you collaborate, you're solving problems each and every day. That's why we celebrate you on industrial talk. You are the heroes in this story, and we are broadcasting on site, SMRP, Fort Worth Texas, and it is a great event. You need to put this on your calendar if you're in the world of asset management, maintenance and reliability. It is an event for you. You need to do that. Do not hesitate. Put that on your calendar. Find the budget money and get on out here. We have two in the hot seat. The company is ifs Ultimo, or is it Ultimo? Ifs, how do you it's

02:00

Ultimo. And ifs

02:01

company, there you go. Got it right there. That's Candi, by the way. And and we have Daniel, and they're with that company, so let's get cracking. Yeah, I was all giddy. I said there's ifs I gotta talk to them. What's going on there, because you guys have been making a splash.

02:21

Yeah, a lot you have, yeah, I like it ifs

02:26

is in acquisition mode. They are building,

02:30

no kidding, yeah, it's so amazing when I'm just like, oh, there's ifs again, there's that purple. It's good, all right. Before we get crack and Candi, give us a little background on where you come from and why you're such an incredible professional, and then make sure that you just overshadow Daniel when he we asked

02:52

him that's not possible. Go ahead,

02:56

Candi. Robison, 25 years of EAM,

02:58

right off the bat. Boom, yeah, boom. Two decades,

03:04

and am passionate about enterprise asset management. I started my career with MRO software way back in the day, and spent a long time at IBM, and then had the opportunity to join Ultimo to build out the North America market a year and a half ago. They are a Dutch company 40 years Yeah, and IFS acquired them just about three years ago and just enormous growth. It's really exciting.

03:37

We're going to dive into that. Yeah. Give us a little background. Yeah. Daniel Rimmasch, a business development representative for Ultimo, been in the industry for about a decade now, started off manager, plus gone on bigger and better things like Ultimo and always listening, always trying to find new things that are going on and also help people see, I love it.

03:59

I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued by what the solution represents, Candi in in a more in a concise way, what? What is

04:12

Ultimo EAM. It is absolutely. How does it

04:14

hold it? How does okay do it again? Enterprise, Asset Management got it? I Okay, go ahead.

04:24

It's the intersection between CMMS and EAM. It's the entry point where you have the conversations we've been having at SMRP today. Is this really changing market? We're at this inflection point where the EAM leaders like Maximo and hex gun and SAP are becoming asset lifecycle management and even in for to a degree, right? And so then you've got the CMMS players that have been sort of marginalized to some degree, growing up and competing at an EAM level. I've heard CMMS and EA. Am being used interchangeably all day.

05:02

Absolutely. I'm just telling you, yeah, APM, asset performance management, monitor, the whole thing,

05:12

yeah, yeah. And I think that's where the the market is is really changing for what our customers need. We're at a place where you've got labor shortages, you've got workforce retiring, you've got skills that government, this crazy economy that we're in right now. Where's sustainability going? Where are customers investing in ESG and and I think there's a certain amount of confusion where maybe I invested in an EAM solution a decade ago. Does it still fit my purpose? Is it time to look at the market and where, where vendors are changing the landscape?

05:53

Yeah, you're you're touching on all cylinders. It's something that I have always like, Okay, I don't know. You're managing assets. You're pulling in data, you're looking at that asset. There it is. It's in the registry, and I'm creating a work order to be able to do this. That the other thing is, I get it. Price, yeah. No, not, not price, as in the dollar at Kevin price, yeah. What is his responsibility? Where does he reside?

06:24

Well, we are friends of nano, and see

06:27

you guys are kicking me in the tush. Nano, yeah, okay.

06:33

Nano, precise, when you think again about how customers are looking at their assets and ESG or sustainability, I want to know energy centered maintenance. What are the trends I'm seeing from my assets based upon energy consumption. Nano is a partner that is going to provide you the devices to be able to manage that, but also connect it to an EM solution like Ultimo, so it brings action to the visibility that you would get from a company like Nano, right?

07:04

Like no. Kevin price, what is his role? What is his role? Kevin price,

07:11

Kevin price, he works for ifs

07:13

No, no, no, he does not. Oh, I'm Oh my gosh.

07:18

Come on. Can we edit this? No, you're fine. Don't worry about it. Go what

07:23

Kevin is the head of EAM at ifs,

07:26

see EAM, yeah.

07:31

And Ultima falls into that

07:34

Yes, as a separate company. Kevin falls into ifs EAM solution in the IFS cloud offering. So think ERP, think an SAP, think an Oracle. I've got an ERP that also provides me an EAM component that's ifs. Ultimo is a separate company that is a maintenance centered conversation.

07:58

Daniel, why is Ultimo good? Give us. Give us the reasons why Ultimo is a little bit different. There's a lot of there's a lot of solutions around here. I'm, I'm stubbing my toes on solutions, yeah, what's this? What makes you different?

08:15

Well, Ultimo takes more of a approach that's different than traditional CMS is in the AMS primarily is what we incorporate as health and safety operations. We include facilities. We make it so that is a one stop shop, and everyone can have their own assets in their own areas and be able to work through what they need to health and safety being one of the larger areas for walk out, tag out, work permits and other areas of that nature. So it really gives all departments a singular view that we we can provide them, and prevents data silos from happening.

08:51

So how are we dealing with legacy systems and coming in with Ultimo and just saying, hey, it's time to consider or consider another stack. Is it? Is it cloud solely, or is there on prem?

09:06

So we are cloud based software period, period.

09:08

Good. Thank you. No, I don't want that on prem, so I'm not there.

09:14

No, but I mean, really, what we do is we have an asset maturity assessment that we do with with our clients to see where they're at currently, and then we help them tradition to the next stage where they want to be. And that's one of the nice things about Ultima, is that we can continuously help and add on additional features, modules, or help the clients as they progress in the journey.

09:37

Okay, everybody gets to the point where they we talk about deployment, yeah, it's, don't, don't. Tell me that in typical deployment is 18 months. What? What can we do? And it depends. It depends. I understand. It's a journey. I understand. But it would seem to me that this your solution is. Nimble, configurable, advanced, just, you know, everybody's like, I got to pull in that data here. I got to connect that. I got this API,

10:14

typical deployment. What are we talking about?

10:16

It can be three months.

10:19

Three right. Come

10:21

on, global, done in house. It is literally the that intersection of starting point for customers and all the way up to a very robust EAM solution, absolutely yes, multilingual, multi currency, multi time zone. And they did all of that in three months themselves. They didn't even work with a with a system integrator. I think one of the other things Ultimo does really well is that training and change management, yeah, yeah. Why? Because we start with the people first, and understanding the customers process.

10:58

See, see, see, that's a big that's a big deal for me. When I was deploying systems a long get time ago, it was very cumbersome. I would never, ever approach an implementation without the people and the process mapping it out in in the trenches. It's just what it is, and it ensures greater acceptance, user acceptance and compliance. So you go through that right? You go through that process.

11:31

Yeah, I also think there's a part of Ultimo that is, even though they're a 30 year old EAM company, still nimble in a way that feels like a startup. The voice of the customer is reflected on our roadmap.

11:46

Amazing. I just didn't know it's been around for that long.

11:49

Yeah, so let's, let's put our, let's put our future hat on. I know where it's going, but I'm not, I'm not going to feed that question future. What do we see? What, what, what trends? How are you preparing for that future? I think, personally, I think we're in a renaissance. I think, I think there's a lot of great opportunities, and I can talk about the people side. That's a challenge. I don't have answers to that, right? But let's, let's talk about the future from an Ultima What are you seeing? You got to be fingers on the pulse. What's going on?

12:26

I would say AI is definitely something I see. I didn't feed that. I didn't do that. It's there. AI is there? Being able to incorporate and to make the job easier for the end users is what's important. So being able to get captured data make it easier for them, and just augment that to streamline the process so that you're actually turning your wrenches, you're doing your job faster. That's what's coming

12:54

to your point. I think it's imperative for these systems to drive out inefficiencies. So if you use the AI as a tool to be able to take, hey, I'm a maintenance tech, right? A maintenance tech and and I want to make sure that my moves are efficient and I'm being, you know, deployed, I don't think you can get rid of the human element. I think that, let's say a device comes in and says, Hey, I'm an AI. I see something going on, right? I still think you need a human to say, yeah, it is. Then be able to sort of, I don't think you can get past that.

13:37

No, you can't. You have to have that human element, yeah, here's the issue, here's what's going on, but then the AI is going to add a little bit addition to it. Just say, is it, let's say there's a problem with a pump. Is there a noise that's going with it? Is there other issues? Is there a smell that's coming from that? And then from there, we're able to capture that information, add it into the data, and then progressively look at other assets as those times come. So it gives us a lot

14:03

more stuff. My toe on smell. You could smell. You got sniffers out there,

14:08

devices that are sniffing

14:10

Well, I mean, yes, so even Boston Dynamics, that's here, depends on your payload. But yeah, you can, you can, you can sniff it. There's visual inspection you're taking. It's also, I would say, even ahead of AI, we're talking we're talking mobile, we're talking better data capture so that that AI, we can train the models to accelerate that, you know, better information going with the technician who's going

14:36

out to do the work. See, this is where I think I get excited, because when I was deploying systems, it was always, how far back do we go in the data? How do we scrub that data? How do we clean that data? Right? And then all of a sudden, you realize, everybody's like, yeah, we want to do it. And a week into that effort, everybody's like, this is not this is not for me. I'm jettisoning it. I'm. Pulling that rip cord and I'm out of here. Figure something else out, right?

15:03

I'm gonna print work orders, yeah?

15:07

But I think Yeah. Daniel said it before it's it's also about creating transparency across the organization. What I see happening is your reliability, your operations, your maintenance, your people, your health and safety, are coming into one platform where you can start to actually create measurable KPIs. It is, how are you going to meet those sustainability goals? How are you going to decrease downtime? How are you going to make your environment safer for your your your workers and technicians that are going out and doing that work? It's one central place where from the boardroom all the way down to the shop floor, yeah, you've got a tool that's delivering what what everybody needs across the organization.

15:55

Are you agnostic to industry?

16:02

Right? When I say industry, you're in oil and gas, you can be oil and gas, you can be manufacturing, you can be it the system is is nimble enough to be able to deal with those

16:12

Absolutely, yes, and we have representative industry across the world.

16:18

Yeah, yeah. It

16:22

do you find, Daniel, do you find in the world of industry? And I'm sorry I keep on saying industry, I know they're verticals and all that stuff, but I don't want to go down the verticals, because I'll leave something out. But let's say industry, do you find a greater attention or awareness for the need of a platform like Ultimo, yeah, I just, you know, I'm a leader. I need to, I need to have greater visibility.

16:49

I mean, food and beverage is one of the prime industries. Wow, so that's one of those things that you've got a kick line, you've got different lines that are needed, you've got regulations that are in place. Yes, we really help out and keep everything in one area. So, yeah,

17:07

do you have a mobile solution?

17:11

Yes, we do. It's on and offline capable. So we have Ultimo go. And it is straightforward. Ultimo go, okay, but I mean, it's very important for the users to be our clients, to be able to use the software and just be able to swipe left, swipe right, fill in their fields, get their job done. They need to be spending more time fixing the assets, maintaining their equipment, than they need to be in the application, but they need to have the right areas to operate out of, and that's where Ultimo go. Really helps,

17:48

okay? Silver Tsunami,

17:50

you've got the system. It's capturing it, capturing information, right? That's good one. How do you address pencil whipping, making it easy for me to enter data. And I, you know, I'm that technician out there. I want to go home, or I've been at this thing and I'm tired. I'm not, I'm not, and I'll just sort of put anything in there. How did, how do you, how do you address that?

18:19

Well, Daniel also did say that it's we embed some amount of AI. So I'm going to give you some choices as you're entering that work order. I'm looking at history back to be able to say, Scott, just choose choose this, choose that, choose this. And it's going to accelerate you putting in that information, either closing out the work order or entering a work order, updating, taking a picture, attaching it to the work order. But again, that's a really effective mobile tool, so it's not printing out a work order and then going back and entering some kind of

18:58

BS data, yeah, once, once you require that individual to go from the field into the office, yeah, that that compliance, that desire, just drops fast.

19:09

Yeah. And also the amount of information that's lost in shift handover, that's another area that we do really, really well, is I want to make sure that that's seamless, but also the people coming in know what happened during the last shift, right? And so effective tools within Ultimo that enables you to accelerate entering the data correctly, yes, so that we can start to make some decisions and move towards a proactive or predictive

19:41

maintenance model. See, I like that, yeah, yeah, because you don't, you don't want to, you don't want to, you don't, you don't want to. Let me sort of touch on a topic that I'm passionate about. Daniel, you're a young professional. Yep, you've been bitten by the bug. You. Whatever that bug is. You've been bitten by it. How do we ensure, or how does your system enable the ability to be able to, sort of help young professionals come up and learn, you know, deal with that learning curve.

20:19

Well, it's all here. What's that? It's all right here. It's all right here on your cell phone. So having the ability to do that, and being at a fingertips, just being able to access the system and use it like any other mobile device, makes a huge difference, and that's what's going to change the way that we do work. It makes things a lot easier. As you mentioned, the silver tsunami, a lot of people are going to be transitioning out. It is, and new people are coming into the industry, and they need to be able to get to work fast, because downtime happens and we can't. We got to prevent it, yeah.

20:55

And and again, make the moves of these maintenance technicians efficient, yeah, like I'm going out there. I know the problem. I've got the tools, I've got the repair I've got the work order, boom, I'm done. Good. Time is compressed. You know, I'm efficient. That's as opposed to the the current way which happens, still today, still today that I'm going to go out to the site, I'm going to go look at that asset. I'm going to have to figure out what's going on. And then I got to go to the storeroom, and I got it. And it's Tick, tock, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. We can't do that. No, no, we can't do that at all. Well, you guys were wonderful. Here it is. You see it sliding up? Candi, how do they get a hold of you that I want to talk to Candi because she she's inspired me now

21:48

all day long. Daniel, same

21:50

thing. Yep, same thing. Check me out on LinkedIn.

21:52

I love this conversation. Solutions, they're all here. SMRP, thank you very much for being on industrial talk. Really appreciate it again. I mentioned it. SMRP, you need to put this on your calendar because it is a great you get to meet Candi. You get to meet Daniel. You get to meet these individuals passionate about your success. All right, we're going to wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned. We will be right back.

22:19

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

22:29

That was Candi, that was Daniel Ultimo, ifs they were in the hot seat, and it was a great event. You're in the world of asset management, in the world of reliability maintenance, and you're looking for answers, you need to go to SMRP. You get to meet people like Candi and Daniel, and they're already just like, yeah, we can answer your your your challenging questions, because that's what they do. They do it all the time because they're professionals. So reach out all of the contact information for those two individuals will be out on industrial talk. You know that. So now come to me and say, Hey, Scott, I can't get a hold of them. All right, industrial talk is here for you. You need to tell your story. It is, it is time. Stop lollygagging. Stop being so self centered. And say, I can't tell my story. It's important. We want you to succeed. Industrial talk is here for you. We can help you with that. It's easy peasy. Industrial talk.com. Click Connect. You be with me. All right. Be bold, be brave. Dare greatly. Hang out with Candi and Daniel. Change the world. We have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned.