Claudio Cataldo and Carlos Toro with NTT Data

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Industrial Talk, digital twins, IoT, data analytics, micro factory, digital transformation, manufacturing efficiency, remote monitoring, predictive analytics, supply chain, technology agnostic, POCs, MVPs, NTT DATA, OMG consortium

00:00

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

once again. Welcome to Industrial Talk. Thank you very much for joining the number one industrial related podcast in the universe that celebrates industry professionals all around the world. That's you. I'm pointing at you, at the camera. You are bold, you are brave, you do greatly, you innovate, you collaborate, you solve problems. And how can you not be saving the world. That's you're just a hero. That's what I look at. And we are broadcasting on site, OMG, Q1 meeting here in Reston, Virginia, and you might hear some noise in the background dragging the furniture, somebody on a mic. Disregard that. That's not where the conversations leading, but that's, we're just on the floor, and we have two, two professionals, two incredible individuals, two people that you need to connect with, Claudio and Carlos NTT is the company, and we're going to be talking about big things, because that's what they are. All about big things. All right, let's get cracking. Don't let me down. Now that I've set you guys up as big things and incredible, don't let me down. Okay, now way west, you know how it is I have, I have a reputation to uphold.

01:33

Whatever that is,

01:36

big time guys having a good meeting. Oh yeah,

01:38

yeah. It's been fun. Lots of stuff and new things going on. Very happy to be here, actually, really, yeah, it's actually a very good event. I believe. Last year, were you here last year, yeah? But this time around, yeah, whole OMG, consortium is meeting together in the same place. So it brings a different angle, you know. So I think it's a great opportunity, because not only about digital twins, it's IoT and all sorts of things. So yeah, it's quite interesting. I

02:09

tell you, I'm I'm glad that you guys made I really believe, and it's not blowing smoke up your skirt or anything like that. It's just a simple fact that I think what you do is is very important, very needed, and and the ability to we have a fan, it's very important, because we need to have trusted solutions, trusted standards, especially now as things just continue to just fly by, and it's an amazing, amazing time. All right, before we get into that, Claudio for the listeners, give us a little background on who you are, all the way from Chile. Well,

02:53

I am the head of digital technology unit in NTT Data Chile. We are conformed by four foundations, data and analytics. That is the foundation that Carlos lit, digital architecture, cyber security and digital experience. So we are very highly specialized team with with that works with a different companies in several industrial sector sectors. So we, we are responsible for design and implement technologies and our clients. So digital twins is one of the value offer that we are improving and get some maturity level. So this year is very special, special for us to stay here, because one year ago, we start to get mature that practice and get improved practice with the incorporation of Carlos. So we are very happy to be here.

04:05

So this is so is Carlos important?

04:10

We say so anyway,

04:11

yeah, Carlos.

04:14

Give us a little background.

04:16

Well, thank you. Thank you Scott for having me back him. Well, my pleasure. Yeah. Well, I'm Carlos, and actually, currently I'm heading the data and analytics unit in NTT Data Chile. But I also have another hat. I'm actually supporting Latin region. So that's different operations that we have in different countries, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, even US, Mexico and Chile, of course, in terms of development and implementation of digital twins. And this is very interesting, because it's a new value offer for the company. It's not that we haven't done that before. Of course, company like ours is due. In all sorts of different technology implementations. But this way, the way, the approach that we are bringing in is new, and this is helping us to reach our customers on a faster speed with better products, better solutions, thanks to composability and molarity that we are implementing

05:22

for the listeners you so they understand NTT DATA Claudio, just explain a little bit about the company itself. Well,

05:32

the company has born. It's part of the NTT, group, Japanese group. It started as a telecommunication group in Japan is the number one telecommunications company, so they create the consultancy company, okay, that is NTT data. So we help clients, or clients to define strategies, implement, transform, digital transformation processes, end to end, sense the business definition processes, until the implementation of technologies with development, automatization, etc. So we we can help all clients from the start in Greenfield modality, but we have a lot I love client that has brownfield reality. So we love brownfield Yeah, I was just

06:34

gonna say absolutely, how Carlos take us through just in general, the the digital twin. Have you seen? I mean, there's there's hype, and then there's reality, and then, you know, the internet saying digital twins the way to go, whatever, whatever it's saying. Are you seeing greater interest because of the value? What's what's driving digital twin?

07:00

Well, I think it's driving my needs, right? User needs. And this is very important, because when we start doing digital twins, realize two things. The first is, when you approach a digital twin project, sometimes you have to start from scratch, right? There's little to none to nothing that things that you can reuse, right? So as a consultancy company, it is important for us to be able to develop very quick solutions, but very powerful solutions that will start adding value to our customers, right? So we needed to develop a methodology, an approach, to build digital twins in a composable manner, right? Because you will sell, for instance, a POC, that POC will prove a certain concept, but then to push it into industrialization, it takes a lot. So we were thinking what we can do in order to solve this issue. There is a lot of different approaches in the market, a lot of solutions, a lot of software vendors that they say we have digital twins. We don't blah, blah, blah, even solutions that look like a digital twin, but they are only visualization situations, visualization for software, right? So we started by thinking, Okay, it's all about data, right? And if you think about that, is in our name, NTT, data, right? We are, we are a people based company. Of course, for us, the most important thing is the people, but we are based on data. So for us, having good approach towards data management, data storage and the use of data through machine learning is important, so it makes the perfect environment for a digital twin. But then you have the added problem that the company works in different scenarios for different countries where have different industries. If you go, for instance, to Spain, manufacturing, automotive is very impactful, right? But if you do this approach in Latin in Chile, is mining, yeah. So what can you do to develop something that will be valid for both or even more scenarios where our customers will require solutions. So I have to say digital twin is not a hype. It's here to stay. It is something that is real. Is something that is useful for our customers and for the people in general terms. And all you need is to think what to do in order to make them available as quick as possible, as fast as possible,

09:46

yeah, don't make me work too hard. I i And again, I will put on my manufacturing hat. I'm a manufacturer. I've got obligations, and I'm manufacturing. I don't have speaking about. Within my head to start to take in all of this new, innovative solutions. I need help. Why is Claudio? Why is why should I need digital twin for my manufacturing process? What can I do with that? Well,

10:17

I can, I can tell you the Chilean experience. And please, I love that. Yeah, we have a lot of mining processes that needs some technology, practice implementation. And I think in Chile we have a very, very high depth in that terms, because the most important copper company in China is from the States, so it's a little difficult to implement new technologies in that company. So we have a lot of manual processes at this time, a lot of and we don't have policies that that force to that companies to get some Efficient efficiency in operations and avoid accidents all the processes. So we have a very good depth and a very high depth in that and we have to to use that depth to implement digital twins. So the digital twins comes to help to companies to get more efficiency, to reduce friction in the processes to reduce work accidents, etc. So I think the detail twin comes with a lot of a lot of benefits that all the industrial areas can use to to different see

11:58

Claudio, you bring up an interesting point. And the point is one, you have existing companies, they're not known for being nimble and wanting to change rapidly. So especially in the world of mining, we do it this way. We're comfortable with this way. We understand this way, whatever this way is. And now you're you're breaking into some real, mature business that's been doing it a certain way for so many years. Yes, but there is a better way. There is, there is the ability to leverage the data to be able to create the insights necessary to to make you even more efficient, which is bottom line value.

12:41

That's the point. That's fine. I think that's a cultural problem. I think that it's the mindset that Chilean industrial mining has. So we are working very, very strong and very strong way to introduce some POCs, MVPs and mining industry. So it's more easy to us, it's easier to us to get that POCs and MBBS and private companies that public.

13:11

That makes sense. Carlos. Part of my notes here, I it's peaking my interest outside of the digital twin and the value of the digital twin, digital transformation, all of that good stuff. Get it. What is micro factory?

13:27

Well, it's a very good one. Actually, when we started doing this approach towards digital twins, the first thing that we realized is that how we train our people to actually create digital twins. So think about this. We have an environment with highly certified people in all sorts of technologies, right? Microsoft, Azure, AWS, Google, whatever you want, right? And then people that knows about visualization, people that knows about certain processes, even people that comes from the perspective of machine learning, but very driven towards businesses like mining, for instance. But you don't have a, kind of like a profile for digital twin specialist, right? You can find people that is going to do cloud engineering, data scientists, but there is not such a thing as a digital twin specialist. So we had new, yes, still new, yeah. So we had to create, first, the training pads for those people. So realize, okay, in order to do a digital twin, you need certain aspects. So at least in your team, you will have those aspects covered, those technologies that are going to be typically and we are very much technology agnostic. We can do whatever technology you name it, right? But we needed to have that. But then, once we had those people trained, we realized another big problem that came into the picture with you will go to a customer, you will show them a digital twin, and. But you can show only partially what you did, because probably that digital twin was made for a company that has IP concerns or something like that. You cannot just show everything. Sometimes you don't even have the data. After the project will finish, because you will just send it back to to the company, and then they will use then we were thinking what we can do to showcase this. And then it goes hand by hand with the situation about composability, this digital twin, this digital twin, composable, digital twin services thing, and the capability stable, right, which is a very powerful resource from digital twin construction. So what we did was to try to find a an asset that will be able to that we can utilize to showcase what we were doing, and that is a micro factory. So a micro factory is actually an asset that you can buy. I mean, it's a German company that does it. But what we did was to start building services on top of the micro factory. Like, for instance, connectivity is an s7 PLC, you know, very typical PLC in the market, yeah, you will find it everywhere. So the connectivity to that PLC step seven Protocol, or OPC, UA, or whatever you want to do with it. Every time, if you will do a project, you will start doing again, again and again, even if you copy and paste the code, why not to have it as a service? So that actually provoked us into moved us into a very interesting topic, because then we started building services, and those services can be utilized, and those services can be tested in the micro factory. The micro factory can be brought in into our customers, so we can showcase, okay, this is what is going to happen. And it's very good as a marketing platform, but also as a technological platform. And that is the micro factory that we have. And then we started doing this in Chile. Now we have two in the US one in Barcelona, and very we think in about a couple of months we were going to have another one in Brazil.

17:09

So micro factory is just that. It's a small factory representation that you get to, you get to showcase the power of the innovation that the technology without but

17:24

it use industrial products, sharing the bad, the confidential stuff. It's a little

17:29

toy that use industrial protocols, connectivity, sensors, etc. So it's a replica of real

17:40

you're going to

17:41

be in Vegas. Yes, you're gonna be showcasing this old micro factory. We

17:46

we hope we can bring it and if the one in the States is already commissioned, that's one of the ideas that we are discussing with with DTC to bring it there. So far, we have brought in the micro factory to a couple of places, Brazil and Peru. And this is very interesting, because when we wanted to bring the micro factory to Peru, and it's not a very big thing, I mean, it fits in a suitcase, right? It's 20 plus kilograms, but it was going to be very difficult to ship it to Peru because of the price tag, because of the insurances, because of many things, sure. So that made us think, why not do remote monitoring? And then we prepare a remote monitoring asset for that. So our service is to do remote monitoring. So that means the real micro factor will be in Chile, and you will put on your VR glasses, and then you will navigate and operate the manufacturing facility that is in Chile. And then for that, you will just have a Senate on camera, and then you can showcase exactly that the factory is doing what you want to. So it allows us to create this capacity that is actually a capacity that you will find as a need in a manufacturing company, to some extent. So in a way, the micro factories are helping us to develop new technology, but at the same time to test it. Like I give you an example we have in the micro factory, we have a conveyor belt, right? Yeah, that conveyor belt is a very typical element that you will find in many industries, FMCG, manufacturing and mining. So a mining company came to us and said, Can you do we want to do predict analytics to see where this will fail, right? So the project that we are going to do with them is to sensorize with real sensors that are on the market, the same sensors that they are going to use this small asset. So at the end of the day, it's going to be pretty much the same thing, only the size and the material will change, but it will help us understand what needs to be done. It's. How the data is going to be flowing if we need a hybrid cloud or edge solution, which one should be? What is the machine learning that we need to put into into a picture? So it is helping us, because all these things are going to be services after all, that you can reuse for other things. So I

20:22

one of the, one of the things that I always speak about here and OMG, all of this is great, great information, these standards, this this work, this body of knowledge that is being produced here at OMG, is phenomenal. I'm going to be a little bit more pragmatic about it, and I want to see it in action. I want to say, here's the standard, then you can at least look at it from from your perspective. That's what I want to see. Yeah, and that, to me, removes the the mystery of it, because now I can see it is that the way? Yes,

20:59

in another, in another point of view, the micro factory, it's it's a great begin for create new talent for us. So there it is. It's really important for a consulting consultancy company like like ours to create new talent without having to stay in a real factor, for example. So it's great for us. We define new path to for to create more capacities in digital twins, to understand the business. Which solution can we afford? So it's great. It's great

21:37

micro factory. Create a digital twin of the micro factory being able to put the sensors that are on there, if I want to manage the assets and get some sort of predictive capabilities on those, I can just play around and do that and and demonstrate that capability and the value, yeah, see now, yeah, that's that's good. That's taking what's going on here, and putting it in.

22:02

And also supply chain, because manual, if you have a couple of micro factories here in the US and then another one in Barcelona, you can actually simulate all sorts of phones that will come with supply chain, because then you will need to think about this warehouse situations. All these things are needs in the industry that can be solved through digital twins. Then for that, and let's just think about it. Base is the capabilities table. So one of the things that we did was to create an application for the capabilities periodic table, because right now it's an Excel file, right? It does the job, but then you have to manually add things. So what we did as part of the project of the micro factory was to create an application react that will be spin in a server, or you can just call it in whatever application you have. It's a web application, and then you can create that table, but that is going to be more dynamic, easily manageable for the people easily like you can work easily with it, right? And that was part of the micro factory project. And think about this. We did all this within two months of work.

23:19

Can you, and that's very cool. Can you take, let's say, the multiple micro factories and optimize the operations and sort of bring them all together? If I'm a company and I have multiple factories, I can bring them all together and and optimize my portfolio.

23:37

That's our next. Our next idea. Oh, is it? Yeah, you just spoil it,

23:43

because that's where I would be going. I would be going right down there. It's like, okay, I have that factory, I have that factory, I have that factory, and I want to optimize it and and sort of roll in that supply chain and all of the dynamics of the marketplace and see how I can optimize it, different

23:59

lines of productions and different factories that that's one of the next ideas.

24:05

I like that you guys are cool. Hey guys. I like exactly what you guys are doing. How does somebody get a hold of you? Claudia, how does so if somebody says I want to talk to you, what's the best way to get a hold of

24:19

you? Well, people can visit TL dot NTT, data.com,

24:24

too hard. Are you out on LinkedIn? Yeah. So also, let me, let me have your business card, yeah. Okay, after that, it's LinkedIn. Don't go down the other route, man, because nobody will want to do that. They just want to click and see your face. Okay, and you're at LinkedIn,

24:39

yes, I'm LinkedIn. He's very active. He's

24:42

more famous than that. He's

24:44

famous, yeah,

24:46

he is. He's Carlos, yeah, famous Carlos. That's what they call it. You go online, type in, famous Carlos. My face, boom, there he is. There he is famous Carlos. Yes, you guys are absolutely wonderful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Scott. All right, listeners, we're gonna have all the contact information, as you know, out on Industrial Talk of these two gents, reach out, find out more. They're doing some remarkable things at NTT DATA. That's exactly right. All right. We are broadcasting from OMG. Go out to omg.org you get to connect with these individuals too, people just like them and solving problems. Go out there to omg.org make make that up happening. So we're going to wrap it up on the SI. Stay tuned. We will be brought back. You're

25:27

listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network

25:37

in one word, data, analytics. That's two words, data, analytics. There you go, one back to one word, I think, yes, uh, anyway, those two, there's golden data. You need to do it. You need to find out that gold. You need to be able to mine it. You need to be able to have those insights into data that help you be a more effective company, a more resilient company, a company that is successful. Data is where it's at and it's and I, you know, based off of the conversation, I think we're just scratching the surface which we are. There's a lot more that can come from this. Reach out to Claudia, reach out to Carlos, to our absolutely wonderful professionals. Would love to have that conversation. We're building a platform Industrial Talk. You have a podcast. Put it out on Industrial Talk. You You want people to hear you. Put it out on Industrial Talk. You have technology. Put it out on Industrial Talk. Be bold, be brave. They're greatly hang out with Claudia. Hang out with Carlos. Change the world. We're going to have another great conversation shortly. So thank you.