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James explained his role and involvement in the reliability of systems and equipment operated in harsh environments, the critical challenges, five to 10 year vision and what he is looking forward to at the event.
Q: Could you briefly explain your role and involvement in the reliability of systems and equipment operated in harsh environments?
James Neophytou (JN): I am a Partner in the Internet of Things consulting practice of IBM. I work with asset intensive clients in the industrial sector (oil and gas, utilities, water, engineering, construction, manufacturing) to deliver digital technology and process improvements such as predictive maintenance, machine learning and A.I. applications.
Q: What is the number one challenge in the quest to improve anticipation of the problems that can occur when trying to maintain reliability in harsh environments?
JN: Remote connectivity – networks, architecture, and infrastructure – and also availability of capable resources to act on any alerts and interventions required.
Q: What is the most exciting development in this field at the moment, either within your company or in the industry in general?
JN: Artificial Intelligence. IBM is at the heart of this, in the enterprise, business-to-business world, with our Watson platform. Variously described as cognitive or machine learning using natural language. This will allow engineers to interact with data and make predictions and reliability interventions ahead of breakdowns, and anticipate patterns of asset behaviour.
Q: Where do you see developments heading in the next 5-10 years regarding the design and management for reliability in extreme conditions?
JN: Data becoming reliable, as there will be less human intervention. Equipment will generate its own health diagnostics. The data can come from many unstructured sources – such as weather predictions, PDF documents, emails, reports, systems of record. In the past, reliability engineers looked at failure patterns, maintenance work order history, inspections and risk assessments. In future, ALL data will be feeding a CORPUS (or body of knowledge) in A.I. systems which can be interrogated using normal speech. I will give a real demo of this during my session in this seminar.
Q: What are you most looking forward to by attending and presenting at the seminar?
JN: As always, meeting peers, and industry practitioners, and learning from them and exchanging ideas. I enjoy presenting at this forum held by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. This will be my 4th year at this event and it is always a full event.
About the conference
James will be speaking at Reliability of Systems and Equipment Operated in Harsh Environments on 6 March 2018 in London. Join him and other experts from Rolls-Royce, SSE Engineering Centre, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy Limited, Sellafield Ltd., BAE Systems Plc, DNV GL Noble Denton Marine Services and more.
Key programme highlights:
- Bechtel share case studies on rotating equipment in harsh environments within the oil and gas sector
- Rolls-Royce discusses design for service in relation to gas turbine engines
- Find out about onshore wind turbines in harsh environments from SSE Engineering Centre
- Gain key insights about in-service reliability for combat aircraft systems from BAE Systems Plc
- Hear from IBM about the rise of the machines and reliable self-healing assets
- Learn from Sellafield Ltd. about how they engineer reliability at their site.
For further information, visit the Reliability of Systems and Equipment Operated in Harsh Environments event page.