Gregorio Hadad with Skyler

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

asset management, reliability, IoT platform, data analysis, predictive maintenance, vibration analysis, AI integration, partnerships, maintenance organizations, criticality assessment, sensor placement, connectivity, actionable insights, CMMS integration, human capital optimization

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

00:22

01:08

01:22

should? It should? I've been coming. I've been broadcasting number of years, and this is your first time. This

01:33

is my first time here. Yeah, aren't the people nice? It's been amazing. Nice. It's been awesome.

01:39

And everybody's just, yeah, I'll help you off. Yeah, I'll talk to you about it. Yeah, I'll collaborate.

01:44

The number of things as well that you can learn about here. I mean, the ecosystem, it's our industry, is all here. So it's been great to be here this week,

01:55

because I've been coming here few years. Number of years, the conversation has changed so dramatically. I think this is just me. We're on a renaissance. I think I've been in asset management reliability for many years. I go way back, and it was always something that was heavy lifting. It was like, do we have to do this? It's a cost. You know, everybody there was a high wind factor. Let's just be frank about now I believe these there's a perfect storm taking place. I need, I need greater efficiency. I need greater insights. I need to optimize the very valuable human capital that I have, and to do that effectively. I think, I think this profession is that a renaissance.

02:44

You agree absolutely, so then I see a lot of shift, as you were saying, like, yes, it used to be a cost. It was seen as not something we're paying attention to now, and it's slowly shifting into even. Some of them are looking at it as a competitive advantage, even. And at some point is going to turn out to be an obligation to be

03:02

focusing there and and we can talk, and we will have a conversation, maybe not you and I, but we I have had over the period of these couple of days, talking about, hey, how do I find my workforce and companies are being forced. I can I'm having a hard time, so I have to be able to allow my existing team to be successful, and that means there's no other way of going. I got to go down this road. Yep, you know, I see now I'm already I need to find out a little bit more about Gregorio. Give us a little background. Where do you come from? Why you're such an incredible professional?

03:41

I'm originally from Argentina. I'm currently based in Italy,

03:46

two great places, and now you're here in Fort Worth,

03:49

Texas, another great place. Good, good answer. And I'm currently the general manager for Skyler. So we are a company that is focused on improving the reliability of our end customers in everything that we do, in every suggestion and decision that we make to is to help our customers improve in that regard. And we have different tools to do it today. We have our partnership network, and we have also our partners on on the sensor side, and yeah, mainly what we're, what we're doing with it is help,

04:23

is Skylar, primarily an IoT manufacturing, collecting data solution.

04:31

We have a hardware partner, so we're and we have our own IoT platform with our AI and all our analytics in house, and we're collecting this data, analyzing it for our customers, and then delivering the actionable insights on any issues that we find. And then we have also a team of Operation analysts that are going through this specific faults, and we send a detailed report to the to the end customers on what we've. Found, and what are the next steps that they need to take to

05:03

So, so if I, if I map it out, you're you, you're pulling data from devices. That's why you're just, I don't care what you got here. We can, we can connect, we can find that data. We can find it and we pull it into your platform that gives meaning and insights into the data that's coming in

05:23

that's got it for now. For now, we're doing this only with vibration and temperature, but our objective is to include a lot more, but I have to as well, absolutely. I mean, it's a no brainer. It's like low hanging fruit, absolutely. And this is part of it, why I wanted also to be here and to see the ecosystem, see what others are doing, and see all the opportunities that we have to partner with different players that are going to help us achieve that a lot faster.

05:46

It would seem to me, as a as I hear what you say, that partnerships are important because they're just like anything else. There's a bunch of CMS you need to you need to put that information into there too. You need to be able to have that connectivity there. And then you also need to have that connectivity, or that ability to be able to pull third party devices too. You're in the middle of it. You need to do it,

06:13

yeah, and we've had great conversations with a lot of CMMS companies here. Yeah, we're going to start working with them very soon to start having Scott are integrated to them so that their end customers have the possibility of having everything in a single location. You

06:28

have to, yep, you know, if I have, if I've invested, whatever the a lot of money in my CMS, that's my system of record. I've, you know, I've done all the heavy lifting in identifying my asset registry, and to be able to pull in that information and attach it the predictive, you know, data, attach it. That's a must, absolutely with API's, it's nothing

06:56

Exactly. It's very simple to do, and customers don't the end user doesn't want to have another platform that they need access to. And what I see here, there's a lot of great solutions that we all have very good products that work, and we've been specialized on getting better and what we do best, but now we need to bring everything together. And I see also a lot of companies that are starting to go into that direction. And yep, it's not

07:25

exactly there's no way you and I was having this conversation with somebody. Okay, I've had a number of conversations, but the reality is, is that we really need as a community to be able to collaborate more. Gone are the days of you being an island, and you brought up a good point. Don't ask that end user, that person in the field, to access another system, because they they won't. Absolutely, that's just not a good thing, a good workflow. Yes.

07:56

And there's also another piece of the of the relationships that we that we've built also with the years. And this is something inherent of scholars DNA. So we have partnerships with maintenance and repair organizations. In fact, scholar is CO owned by three different maintenance and repair organizations. One of them is HECO, oh yeah, Energy Management Corporation as well in her Northwest so. And we have also many other partners in the different territories of the states, and they have been critical for our success in order to provide the end customer the possibility to maintain all these different IoT solutions that are deployed, specifically with Skyler. And they are also our feet on the ground. They are the ones that are focused on they know their customer pain points. They are there in the plan with them every day, and this has been critical for us, and a key differentiator that our end customers have valued so much.

08:53

That's outrageous. I didn't realize that. I mean Skyler, from what I can tell you, can collaborate with anybody in the world of asset management. What we're talking about here reliability as well. You find yourself with that platform, being able to sort of really collaborate with other all. There's no friction there. That's correct. How long has Skyler been around?

09:22

But the company was previously owned by by a group called relayer that was owned by Munich Re

09:30

and I know relayer that, wow, that, yeah, when I was in when I was in Barcelona, relayer was always in IoT solutions, World Congress in

09:40

Barcelona. Yeah, I've been there a couple of times too. I

09:43

was there. I was broadcasting small world

09:49

they've been around for it's over 10 years. Yes, well, specifically, we are now with this new group of maintenance and repair organizations, since the past year, actually, October. Last year, it's when Skylar got under the new ownership.

10:03

No kidding, what makes Skyler? So what's the secret sauce not to I understand, don't you know what I mean? Just generally speaking, because there are other platforms that say, Yeah, I can take that data, yeah, I can apply an AI, yeah, I can identify anomalies, yeah, I can then push out, you know, hey, this is, this is your problem.

10:28

Whatever, our partnerships have been key to making this difference in how we choose this partnerships. So we don't, we make sure that whoever we partner with has a very strong knowledge on asset reliability and that that is a core focus of their business, because this is going to help us to make sure that when we go and assess so everything starts by assessing the criticality of the processes of our end customers, and we start getting down from there, understanding which assets need to be monitored with a super precise IoT solution, but maybe there's a wide part of the plan that just requires rent to failure or vibration routes are more efficient. Yeah. So we make sure that the customer is getting the right balance there, so that they are not having any waste in terms of money, or that they are not monitoring, and under monitoring an asset that can eventually fail because he didn't have maybe a solution like Skylar that could help them prevent a fall. This has been for us, something extremely

11:29

helpful. Does Skylar probably, through your partners, get involved in that asset criticality efforts?

11:36

Yes, we help our customers. Many of them already know what's the their criticality and the different process?

11:44

Yeah, the President's air conditioning. That's the top of the we're

11:47

definitely going to monitor that. Yeah, if necessary. But yeah, it's not always that. Of course.

11:54

Hopefully there's some real, you know, meat behind the determination of what that is, but

11:59

yeah, we definitely have the capability to help with that. And there's also going specifically on the on the installation itself. We also have experts that know where to locate a sensor. So it's not just a matter of positioning. For example, one sensor in the middle of a motor. Yeah? There are ways to do it there. There are assets that require two sensors, others, four, other six. It depends on the asset type. Yeah. So this is all a study that we perform also with our partners. So we get basically, we assess the criticality within customer we understand what we agree on, what they need to monitor, and then from there, we assess how many sensors are needed, where to locate them. We make sure that the connectivity on the site is going to be working there for many years without kind of interruptions. Yeah. And then once the installation is performed, it's not, it doesn't end there. Yeah, that's actually at the start of sky, yeah. Once the assets, once the AI has learned what it is monitoring and how the health state of the equipment is, from there we have all the well, the AI starts working, and we have also our vibration analysts that are having once a week, twice a week, meetings with these end customers, supporting them on on what we are finding and covering any questions about any equipment that they have. Does

13:19

Skylar have a historian of just like pumps and motors that I can take the data from another location and and be able to apply some algorithm to ping it, and, you know, get some insights.

13:43

All the data, of course, is anonymized from our AI is using that information exactly for what you were mentioning. So we have a lot of pumps across different industries, electric motors, compressors, yes. So our system is able to perform a baseline based on what's normal for that type of equipment. Yes, because I was mentioning before on the installation where we are assessing the connectivity, there's another very important thing that we do that is collecting all the technical specifications of the asset. Yes, go ahead, Skyler needs to know if it's if it's monitoring an electric motor or a pump. So we need to tell all this different out of this different data. If we don't tell anything to the system, it doesn't know if it's monitoring an electric motor, yeah, or a dishwasher, yeah, we got to be very the more information we provided, the more accurate it's going to

14:36

be, because the fact is, I need, I'll back up through that. I'll just use it. It could be wrong. Asset registry, all the information about that motor that pump, whatever that that asset, asset registry, that nameplate, everything and and does, does your platform? I look at that, I got it, I got the device on that one, but also that that device or that asset can reside in another geographic location, not within the same confines of the business, but maybe ones in Florida and the other ones in Italy, you know. And the behavior of that these assets are different because the weather and and whatever it's just, it's different. They can't be the same. Does Skyler, the platform, take that into consideration? Saying, yeah, it's over here and then versus here, but, but you get

15:36

it, yeah? So it based on this metadata, again, that we collect, we try to provide it as all the context that we can, yeah, so that the system can understand similarities and differences. So that's mainly how we try to address that. But you're absolutely right, two similar pieces of equipment can be running different in two different sites. Yes, and maybe that's exactly the case for plugging an anomaly, right? And we tell the customer we are looking this at our the frequency spectrum, like the system can tell them automatically we're having this issue. The we're detecting this issue, and we believe that it's a subfoot. Please go and inspect the motor driven end base for it.

16:19

See what I like is that you're taking this very sophisticated platform, but you have not removed the human element. You're saying, Hey, I've got this tool. This tool is checking on these assets. Oh, there's an anomaly. Let me human person contact the other human person saying, we see in this that's that's important, that's important.

16:46

And the plot, so the platform itself is going to first send an alert immediately, yeah. And then, as you mentioned, Scott, there will be the vibration analyst sending this, yes, very specific to port, very specific analysis.

16:57

And and because of that, there's greater efficiency for that vibration tech. Instead of that vibration tech just saying, Oh, I'm looking at a bunch of squiggly lines. I get it. I got, I got, oh, there it is. No, the platform says, No, look, look here. Everything was fine. And then all of a sudden, look here. That makes, that makes me more efficient as a vibration and and then I'm able to say yes, that is a bearing, or begin a bearing beginning to fail, or whatever the does. Does your system sort of provide that sort of recommendation?

17:34

Yes? Yeah, absolutely. And this is our objective, is to make the teams, as you mentioned, the reliability teams, and making teams more efficient. So everyone's stretched too thin. Today, we see our customers are running an emergency mode all the time. So our objective is, of course, to collect the data for them, analyze it for them, and make their troubleshooting process as fast as possible. So we don't want to tell you just, hey, there's an alert on the sensor. We want to tell you there's an alert on the motor driven end of this. Thank you. And we're we see that there's an early bearing degradation and you need to address it in the next outage and by a replacement or by a regressing.

18:15

Yes, see that's brilliant, because, because I want to be able to activate after that conversation, activate my maintenance tech, give them the right information. Take this bearing or take this lube, whatever it might be. Do this, do this, do this, this wrench, and be able to optimize his, his or hers work. Because, you know, as well as I do, here's the real world. It's typically, hey, there's a problem going out there. Somebody walks out there, yeah, there's a problem out there. Somebody goes to the warehouse, yeah, there's a it would be great to be able to compress that time in such a way that it's just, I'm done, I'm done and and be able to then take that, put it in my CMMS, do it, not pencil, whip it because I got a mobile app, I stick it in there. Everything's good. That's done next.

19:06

That's a great point as well, also for the system, such a system like Skyler, learning what was done after and then seeing the reaction to that is making the analytics better, and it's making Skyler more reliable for

19:18

you. Yeah, see, I'm all in I'm all geeky. I love it. Gregorio, how do people get a hold of you? How do people get a hold of you? They're saying, I want to connect with you.

19:30

Well, they can reach out to us directly from Skyler. So our website is Go skylar.com or directly to my through my email. Gregorio, dot Haddad at Go skylar.com How about LinkedIn? They can find it by Gregorio that.

19:44

Yeah, I'll have that link that makes it all easy. You were absolutely spectacular. You were you were dazzling. We were all you were nervous a little bit, but you look at you, man, you delivered. You're the best one here. Scott, the front door, all right. That's a connection that you need to make right here at SMRP. You get people like him. You get at SMRP, you get people like him. That is an absolutely stellar This is an exciting time. You need to be in asset management, reliability maintenance. You need to be a part of this. You need to do it absolutely once again, we're broadcasting here at SMRP. We are having a grand time, incredible leaders, incredible problem solvers. Right here. Put this on your calendar. Next week, we're going to wrap it up on this side. Stay tuned. We will be right

20:28

back. You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

20:38