Lee Morgan with Fluke Reliability

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Reliability, sensors, platform, customer, Azima, data, industrial, fluke, talk, bit, predictive maintenance, technic, solution, gateway, vibration, machine, asset management, Xcelerate, failures, software

00:03

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

00:21

again, welcome to the next episode of industrial talk the number one industry related podcast in the universe that celebrates industry professionals all around the world. Yes, you are bold. Yes, you are brave. Yes, you dare greatly you collaborate. You solve problems, you make the world a better place. That's why we celebrate you on industrial talk, go out to industrial talk.com and find out about all of these incredible professionals. And we are broadcasting on site we are here at Xcelerate 2024 It is Fluke Reliability. It is in Orlando, it is an amazing event, you're gonna need to put this on your calendar just because well, it's important for an event to put on your calendar. If you're in the world of asset management, maintenance and Reliability. This is the place you need to be. We have a gentleman in the hot seat. His name is Lee Morgan. And we're gonna be talking about Azima. And everything else in between. Let's get cracking. Haley. Hey, Scott. How you doing?

01:21

I'm very good. Thank you.

01:23

Somebody dragged you over here? No, I'd like somebody said,

01:25

Hey, you gotta come on over here. I came over from like, my own freewill.

01:30

Did you really I did, indeed. Just said, hey, I want to, I want to do this. But

01:34

you look pretty cool. And I wanted to be part of it.

01:37

Like that, man. That's cool. Kudos to you for doing that. You're a leader. So before we get into the topic of his email, and everything in between, for the listeners out there just sort of paint the picture of who he is. Yeah,

01:54

well, I'm I'm actually currently senior Global Product Marketing Manager for the Fluke Reliability, part of fluke, and obviously, flukes got a role of what are you? It's a bit of a mouthful, yes. Basically, I'm a product marketing manager. And I look after the whole of the Fluke Reliability portfolio. So that consists of Azima, a company we have recently acquired, it also consists of a proof technic arm, which, who specializes in handheld and online monitoring, vibration and alignment tools. We also, of course, look after email as well, which is our asset management software, which is pretty much the start of the show at Xcelerate this year.

02:32

Yeah, you got some changes happen with your email, here trying to convert everybody to x five, I see, I always want to put the X at the end of it just naturally, it's, it's an it's an algebraic equation. 5x. Yeah, now you need x five.

02:48

So it's not a case of converting everybody it's a case of, you know, matching the right solution for what the customer needs. And x fives is, is going to be a platform moving forward. Not that we're going to all of a sudden get rid of export. But with the x five platform, we think we think it's gonna be more scalable for future uses. And, you know, whatever the customer's requirements are, well, what's

03:10

the what's sort of in a, I know, there's differences, but what sort of that major difference that x five has over x four.

03:18

So if probably need to speak to the Senior Product Manager for that.

03:26

Just don't worry about it. It's actually

03:29

the platform the x five is built on is far more capable than than the x four. So export, the platform is built on is it's kind of it's it's a little bit long in the tooth now. And so we can do far more things with the platform, the x five version is built on. And like I mentioned before, it's a lot more scalable for our new customer requirements, and a lot more flexible and a lot more powerful for our customers usage.

03:53

Yeah, you did fine. I can't call you out. You know, what the Pac Man, it's all good. All right. Azima. It is the bus here at this particular event. I've had a number of conversations about that product. And it is relatively new and you acquired it late 2023. That's correct. And you still are just starting to get it into sort of what does that mean to the portfolio of Fluke Reliability and group technic, and so on and so forth? Talk to us a little bit about that.

04:28

Yeah, I think what what the Azima portfolio brings is really the added insight. So you know, if you think about a customer that has an online vibration monitoring system, they might have expertise, they might have the system already set up gathering buckets and buckets of data. But actually, do they have the time and the resources to look at that data? No, they don't.

04:49

They don't.

04:50

This is what we've heard all week. So absolutely

04:53

not

04:54

Azima platform. I mean, it's built on a heritage of you know, it's got trillions of data points. I think The analysts typically test about 500,000 machines a year. And with that becomes,

05:07

I hate to say that melt that 500,000 machines, it's amazing.

05:12

I mean, typically our vibration analysts are about three to five times more efficient than others. And because the the Azima platform, the watchman services, you can take in all this all these buckets, buckets and buckets of data and actually get insights out of it. And we can predict failures like months in advance. So that gives asset managers Reliability managers, you know, real peace of mind, that they're not just setting up a system to provide false flags or do not pick up on, on protect potential failures, they've actually got confidence in the fact that they've got somebody watching their backs. And all the data that's coming in is, is also helping them future customers, because there's a really good chance that we would have tested your machine at some point in the past. So we've got a really good trend and reference point, to advise customers on their sort of predictive maintenance platforms. That's

06:00

mad value proposition when you start looking at the trillions of data points. And and that history that exists there, going back, what, 30 years or so. And I would imagine, if you came to me, you can, I'm not going to do anything with it. But let's say I did do something with it, it would seem to me that that would be a real, solid selling point of the platform. Yes. And, and and take us through how it makes just the process more efficient.

06:36

So yeah, if you think about, you know, there's a lot of a lot of our customers today, and there's a lot of people here today, you know, they they're firefighting, and now they're having to be reactive, that's true, they don't have time to sit down and look at the, if they're lucky to have a system in place in the first place. And what again, what this email platform really does is it gives them peace of mind, the data is coming in, we can handle the services aspect as well. So it's a complete turnkey solution. The wireless sensors, they actually operate on like a self healing mesh network. So you know, a lot of people think, well, wireless technologies, they can be bit hit or miss, they can be a bit flaky. But the sensors actually can work on a mesh system. So if if one of them is a little bit further away from the gateway, it can actually connect to another sensor, and it will almost act as a relay to get to get that vibration data back to the Gateway. I didn't know it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. That

07:28

that exists today. Yes, yep, they exist today. So explain just a little bit more how that that that sounds cool. Just tell me about that. Yeah.

07:36

So basically, what happens is each sensor kind of acts as its own node. And it can talk to other sensors. So let's say you put the gateway somewhere like on a wall of a machine to buy, and you've got like 20, or 30 sensors in that room, you don't actually have to put the gateway in the middle of all the sensors to make sure there's a good signal, as long as it's near one sensor, that one sensor then can act kind of like, like, if you imagine the signal hopping sensor. So it gives peace of mind because, you know, having sensors that are on cables that are permanently installed isn't always an option. And the wireless sensors are as simple as gluing them to the actual machine takes place. See, and then it connects up.

08:19

That's the way to go. No I running. I really thought that running cables is sort of yesterday, by a long shot, just because many of the these sensors are able to get up and running and collecting data. Quick. Yes.

08:37

I mean, actually, that brings me to a good point, because a lot of machine monitoring systems they take, like they could actually take a failure to actually get a trendline where we don't need that, you know, we could be I think I think somebody told me it was between one month, one month, three months. And after that we've kind of already got the baseline and we can be given peace of mind really quickly. So I think I think we've got that I think I've got that timeline. Right. I might have to double check my notes. But yeah, so it's roughly I think it's roughly about four to six weeks, and we've got the trendline capable to provide some predictive maintenance to the customer honored

09:13

asset. Yes. Yeah. It because why? Because you've got the data. That's what it is. Yeah,

09:20

we've got the trillions of data points. And I think we've got like over 50 machine types in our library as well, which if you think about a typical industrial plan, that's pretty much covers pretty much every rotating piece of machinery that they would have that so so it's a pretty comprehensive database.

09:37

Where is your more applications that can be applied with this platform or

09:44

say it's mostly rotating plant so you know, you thinking of fans, blowers, pumps, we will soon potentially have the capability to lower speed as well. So things like generators, turbines, you know, any critical plant that you might have in in your sort of manufacturing, industrial, petrochemical, oil and gas or pretty much most rotating plant can be covered by the solution.

10:13

Where do you see it going? I mean, where's this this juggernaut heading, because it's still relatively new tip of the iceberg type of stuff

10:21

it is and what we've recently been able to do. So if you take our proof technic online monitoring system, which is called the VIP guard, now we have like 1000s of these installed in a lot of customer installations. And that currently utilizes a software called Oh, MTC or Omni trend data center. And what we've done is we've enabled the software, the the data that exists within MTC to actually then transfer into the Azima software, which is called the expert alert diagnostic system that that again. That allows us to offer the Azima watchman services to all of our existing CRIF technic customers as well. So you know, there's customers that they really trust, Reliability and trust proof technic, now they've got the added bonus that if they want a fully fledged service offering as well, we can do that using the Azima solution.

11:20

So if I'm an already existing customer, I use the products that are being delivered by, you know, Reliability, you know, Fluke Reliability, and so on. How difficult is it to connect via zoom a product.

11:34

So the good thing about it is we handle it all. So the best thing to if any listeners are interested, get in touch with your local contact, or myself, you can look me up on LinkedIn if you like. And then we'll arrange either a site visit or we can do it remotely. And then we can work out how best the data can get into our Zema system.

11:54

But you're still you're still working through the details of that. And eventually, it'll just be part of the ever expanding offering that Reliability and we've

12:05

got one customer that's loads company working on. So we've got to kind of get a pilot scheme. But it's currently working and we're getting the data through into these even system.

12:15

Was the customer saying they're pretty happy? They really,

12:19

I mean, it's the like I said, it's, you know, to provide a predictive maintenance platform that can give you advanced warning months in advance. You know, that's pretty it's almost like given the Reliability manager a crystal ball into their into their acid health. So it's yeah.

12:38

It's cool stuff. How do people say and I'm listening to this, we've had a number of conversations with Azima. And find or just how to, what's the best way to get a hold of you? Probably

12:51

via LinkedIn. So if you just look up Lee Morgan fluke, I should hopefully pop up. And there's

12:58

not another lead Morgan and fluke,

13:00

I think I think there's only there's only one.

13:05

Well, you were absolutely wonderful, enjoyed the conversation immensely. All right, listeners, we're going to have all the contact information for Lee out on industrial talks or fear nine, you got to find out more about this Azima. It's just seems like a really pretty cool solution. And it's just at the beginning. Since a tip. That's cool stuff. All right, we're broadcasting from the Fluke Reliability, Xcelerate 2024 User Conference here in Orlando. And if you're in the world of asset management, maintenance, Reliability, whatever you're in, you need to be a part of this event. So put this on your calendar for 2025 If you're not here, so stay tuned, we will be right back.

13:48

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

13:57

Yep, his name is Lee. Yep. Fluke Reliability is the organization Xcelerate 2024. And you have to know that Lee knows what he's talking about. Global. He sees it globally, that's in his title. So he does see the the maintenance Reliability Asset Management globally. All of the solutions associated with that. And I think the holy grail is to be able to interact with some, some organizations that is vertically vertically integrated, and solve all your challenges. Gonna be able to talk to these people. See, because it's about education, collaboration and innovation. It's all right there right there. Fluke Reliability, building a platform. That's what we're doing here on industrial talk. If you have a podcast and you're saying or you want to do a podcast, you're saying to yourself, don't know how to do it. You just need to reach out to me I'm here to help. I want you to succeed. So just go out to industrial talk. Have a conversation with me. We'll get you're dialed in Be bold be brave Daring Greatly we're gonna have another great conversation shortly so stay tuned