Christian Silbernagel with Fluke Reliability

Mon, Jul 29, 2024 10:31AM • 14:57

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

data, Azima, reliability, industry, fluke, vibration, industrial, chris, ai, diagnostic, specialists, scott, conference, validated, world, experts, good, conversation, innovation

00:04

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 get right once

00:22

again, thank you very much for joining Industrial Talk. And thank you for your continued support of an ever-expanding ecosystem of problem solving professionals. Here on Industrial Talk, you are bold, brave, you dare greatly you innovate, you collaborate, you solve problems. That's why we celebrate you on Industrial Talk. We are here at Fluke reliabilities Xcelerate 2024 Orlando, Florida. It's a mouthful, but it's the user community. And I'm telling you, it's happening to happening as we speak, as you can tell by the buzz in the background. All right. He's been on the show before he is spectacular.

01:05

Well, if you say so.

01:07

Chris is on in the hot seat. Let's get cracking. Yeah.

01:13

Pretty good. How are you, sir?

01:14

No complaints. Thank you for asking. Sure. You haven't a good conference media? What do we call this isn't a user user meeting?

01:24

I would say it's a user conference shows you're a cop? Yes. So it's like, bigger than a meeting. It's bigger than a meeting. I mean, like we're talking about a couple of 100 people here, right? There's a lot of training sessions inside sessions, industry trend sessions, right. So then you get the chance to exchange here with like, experts dive deeper and your journey of connected reliability. And yeah, also like, Monday, like a pre conference. That also entailed a thought leadership day, bringing different industry leaders together, and having like really vivid and really fruitful discussions.

02:02

It's good stuff.

02:03

It's really good stuff.

02:04

Yeah, I like that. Before we get into your conversation, give us a little background on Chris and, you know, your your Where do you come from?

02:13

I mean, like, obviously not from the West Coast. Although I resides in San Diego. Originally, I'm from Germany, started my career in reliability 2012 with a company called Pruftechnik work as a condition monitoring engineer, after like three years change flipping back services to the sales side of life. That key account management to those 90 moved over to the States worked as a sales manager. Afterwards his enterprise account manager and since half a year now as head of the America sales team, there you have it

02:49

for clarification. So what we have here is we have Fluke reliability, we have E made, we have Pruftechnik. And then then we have some various other services. Tell us tell us the rule of Pruftechnik.

03:04

Perfect. Yeah. So I mean, like Pruftechnik, very well known by the laser shaft alignment systems, the waterline optar line, right, pretty, pretty well known in the north in the North American market. And also known for its high quality hardware, right, that Pruftechnik was producing ever since. And also in the world of vibration, high end vibration tools for diagnostic specialists and like, also like high quality online online systems. So that's where Pruftechnik is basically originally coming from which kind of nicely matched if you think about fluke, right Fluke is coming from that same history. So yeah, that's like, the role of Pruftechnik, I would say is like in the field of data acquisition and correction, in the field of reliability. So if you think about and you actually forgot our latest addition, right from to our portfolio of Fluke reliability, our new colleagues from Azima, here July, that complements very, very well while Pruftechnik like providing the high quality data. If you think about AI, you feed AI with data, right? And, but the outcome of AI, like the outputs of it is only as good as the data quality that you put into it. So it's like garbage in garbage in garbage out. That's why it's such a nice addition to our portfolio. Tell

04:33

us because you've got the diagnostic gear down pat. So from a vibration perspective, and if I understand Azima that's pretty vibration centric, but it has 30 years of of information that is in this data, like tell us how that Pruftechnik and how do you marry it up? Yeah.

04:55

So if you think about what is like very, very simple actual about the Azima data, as you mentioned, it's really important because like to like really think about it, it's validated data. So if you think about the course of 30 years, so there's like trillions of data points, but they have been analyzed by specialists, cat three, cat four, in like various environments and like verticals that have been challenging. So you have validated data, and that is worth gold, there is like no one that has that amount of data that gets validated already. I mean, like, there is 1000s of algorithms, data centers full of data, but in the field of vibration, right, and maintenance and reliability, cross checking data verification, that is like what sets that data set off and actually makes it such a great engine to like feed and get output. And if you think about vibration, right, think about an online system, for example, right? That can like feed data in any place. If you think about Azima, they were already set up in the cloud environment, have API Dockers. Right. And that is like where we can like married us in the future.

06:11

Yeah, and because of the the Pruftechnik solution, the diagnostic, you're, you're optimizing that that data too, as well. And you're just constantly feeding that data lake with more information with more detail. I heard I heard a thing. And it's like, you've got over trillions and trillions of data points. Yeah. Like, that just blows me away. Yeah. And faster, suppose me away?

06:43

The very, very nice thing is you can like with that data, Lake, right, your algorithms and so on, like have much, much higher hit rate? Yeah. And what you can do is like you can, companies that have already experts, right? You can make them more efficient. Oh, yeah. And take instead of like, eight assets that they could look at, right, because there was a lot of large data sets, suddenly, they can do 58. If you further optimize, they can do over 100. And it's like, you have to think about that, right? This means like scale, scalability is now not just a buzzword, it's reality, standardization can like happen faster for that. And if you think about the, the shortfall in skilled labor that we are seeing, right, and I mean, like the number is somewhere to be predicted in between like eight to 9 million right going forward. And if you think about that, like how much time it like took in the past, like train analysts and now you can just like we can provide to those analysts through the Zoom experts that are using that solution also to scale it fast for you. Or if you have experts make them more efficient and can also scale for that. So that's like something that was like not possible beforehand for us as a company in that manner in the field of vibration that gets me super excited.

08:07

She is pretty cool. Yeah, cuz it never stops evolving. Exactly. The conversations that we had last year versus conversations we've had this year, completely different. Yeah. And it just speaks about the speed at which things change and and I heard some people talk about industry for Dotto GOT IT industry for no they're talking about industry

08:28

five Dotto RIA pasts past four. Yeah,

08:30

yeah, we're past. And that was that law. And now we're looking at it this way. Where do you see it going? Where do you where do you see this whole AI diagnostic capability going? Just put your future head on. You're

08:44

mean like, we are living in a field of robots. And then like, there is no one

08:49

action now. I, I look at it this way I look at it. How do you we we leverage this technology, business innovation in the world of of asset management, this connected world, and it's just your you speak on Azima. And that is vibration centric. But then there's all this other opportunity that exists out there that can take all that data, parse it out, and make be more efficient, that whole model, what you just described can be applied across the

09:23

board. Yeah. So think about what is your big game? For sure, like downtime, most manufacturing companies report like 100,000 an hour, depending on what industries we are talking. And if you think about that, yeah, that is the return and rest that everyone measures but what is even more important, it's time you're buying time, right? So you're buying time and now you can start focusing on tasks that are more meaningful, right? Like tasks that you have not spent time on beforehand. And that is, I believe, a much Much more important game than return on invest purely because now you can start like, Okay, I have this situation now under control. Now I can keep going fixing other things. And that's like something deals, efficiency gains status, like what really stands stands out for me and I believe if we drive that, think about something that I've seen in the industry also visiting customers, they had like those massive posters, there's like, if you give us a referral for good engineering that we can hire, we give you dear employer, employee, sorry for that. 5k. And I'm just like, can I give you referrals, like, I want to have 5k It's like, people had a huge problem specifically, during but also after COVID, right after the pandemic, suddenly, like people want to change jobs, they were like, I don't want to do this anymore. And there was a certain retention risk and for maintenance, reliability, retention is like really, really crucial. What you're doing now is basically like, think about the younger generation of engineers that is now coming and pressing into the, into the market. They don't want to do like those manual tasks anymore. They want to do like cool stuff, right? They want to be supportive. Because like, think about, like, your private life companion, for example, AI, like, I mean, like, the companion also helps me like I'm having more free time, because I'm using that the younger generation is doing that since years already, like using all those bits, to like, just save, save time and focus on what matters to them. Right. And that will be like the future, right? Just focus on what matters have those have to help us and also being able to wear different hats, not by not just being a narrow specialist, but like more in a wider sense, but being supported by actual accurate systems, right, that are going to help you.

11:54

You never disappoint you bring out some really interesting top. I like that buying of time. And we don't take that into consideration when we look at investments. I don't think we do. I guess you could you could, you could come up with a quantifiable amount.

12:09

Yeah. I mean, like, I just had a conversation with a customer the other day, they just started rolling out some online installations. And just reported for the first two months like cost savings in like half a million. Wow, that is like something like really stands out to me like, it is like possible. And then like, if you think about like, yeah, you can measure return on invest, but like what I really, really believe that's not the only KPI we should like I like that

12:42

a lot. I really do. And I agree with you 100%. That's something that you can never, you can never get back. I don't know, it's something else. How do we get a hold of you? When you when somebody says, hey, I want to get a hold of Chris, what would be the best way to get a hold of you?

12:56

Just shoot me a message on LinkedIn.

13:00

Yeah, you're out. There you go. You're awesome.

13:06

Thank you, Scott like that.

13:07

All right, we're gonna have all the contact information for Chris out on Industrial Talk, reach out connect, because it's all about education, collaboration and innovation. Collaboration is key. So collaborate with some of the best in the business. And that is Chris. Big time. All right, again, Fluke reliability. We are broadcasting here on site. It's Xcelerate 2024 User Conference, we've established that it's a user conference now, just because of Chris. Okay. Thank you very much for joining. We will be right back.

13:38

You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

13:48

Christian Slibernagel.

13:49

Yes, he's

13:50

a must connect absolutely must connect. Here's what I got out of the conversation outside of the obvious one time. So you use the AI Azima to be able to increase time. I know that sounds sort of odd, but it gives you more time to focus in on what needs to be repaired. Because you have high confidence in the data that is being used in the analysis. It makes complete sense. All right, you can tell I got a little raspy voice happening here. But we are here at Industrial Talk. Creating a platform you have a podcast if you just say Scott, I have a podcast, contact me put it out on Industrial Talk, too. If you have technology, and you're saying Scott, I want greater visibility of that technology. Come talk to me go out to Industrial Talk. If you want to be on the podcast. Let me know. Go out to Industrial Talk. See, that's the process. Be bold, be brave, dare greatly hang out with Christian change the world we're going to have great conversations with them.