Q&A: AVEVA’s Chief Product Officer on Tapping into Zettabytes of Data

If data is the new currency, what makes a company stand out among the many industrial digital enterprises shaping the digital economy?

To answer this question, look carefully at how they go about building data connections between the people, businesses, devices, equipment and processes. For those that evangelize digitization, hyperconnectivity is the backbone. Their distinction and success, however, lie at the intersection of tracking, monitoring, listening, watching and continuously learning.

Integrating data is at the forefront of everything we do. The International Data Corporation (IDC), forecasts the amount of data created, captured, replicated and consumed will reach 175 zettabytes by 2025.

For software companies like AVEVA, capturing the opportunity means embracing digital platforms; investing in innovators, artificial intelligence and emerging technologies; and expanding its ever-growing ecosystem. The UK-based software company was acquired by global automation and energy management specialists Schneider Electric in 2023. To date AVEVA has preserved its business autonomy and strives to become the go-to SaaS provider of software and industrial information.

In the interview below, Rob McGreevy, AVEVA’s chief product officer, explains the company’s “radical collaboration” approach to data-centric physical asset management.

Machine Design: During your presentation at AVEVA World 2024 in Paris, you stressed that the global industrial sector increasingly relies on data to maximize business value. You also said that data as a resource only truly becomes useful when it is extracted, processed and delivered to the right people at the right time, securely and in context. Can you elaborate in more basic or practical terms?

Rob McGreevy: We could take it down a level to machine building and equipment manufacturers. For example, all elements of how you decide to design the next generation of machinery, construct and build it, and then turn it over into operations are changing as a result of digital transformation. So, what does that actually mean? It means that all machine designs are built digitally. In this database, you will essentially simulate and model how this [machine] could behave based on certain outputs.

That transitions into an actual design engineering environment—a CAD tool—where you create a model of the environment that you’re using, or of the machine you’re building. And then that digital twin, that digital definition, starts to make its way into the operating world, where the machine actually gets built and constructed and then ultimately turned over to a customer who’s going to use it to produce finished goods, palletizers, case packers, whatever the machinery of choice is.

The other piece is that that digital twin continues. So now that the machine is producing finished goods, it’s capturing telemetry and data, vibration, thermal, temperature—whatever it may. Ultimately, that information needs to make its way, not only to the customer because they use that to help produce finished goods, but that information can also make its way back to the machine builders to inform on future designs to improve the machinery as you get real-time information about how it performs in the field. This closes the design simulation loop for machine builders.

The other thing you can do is open avenues of growth for machine builders and OEMs and equipment manufacturers to create new business models, where you start to monitor and maintain the health and well-being of that machine on behalf of the customer. So those can become value-added services.

And in this case, the machine itself becomes a fully digitally defined, living (if I can use the term), piece of equipment that continues this constant loop of design, engineering and optimization. It is not just building machinery that you turn over to a customer. It becomes a collaboration between machine builders and customers to actually drive improvements to ultimately make and manufacture better products.

AVEVA’s open digital platform spans the entire industrial lifecycle and is touted for enabling tasks such as real-time data acquisition, visualization, system reliability and performance optimization.

MD: Referencing themes you unpacked during your presentation—about radical collaboration, advanced technology and responsible resources—how do these factors support AVEVA’s conference theme of “Generating Impact?”

RM: A lot of different themes to unpack there, across radical collaboration, across sustainability and the responsible use of resources to meet those demands. And, of course, advanced technology, which is largely what we’re t

Radical collaboration is about engaging the community at large in industrial manufacturing critical infrastructure to help solve these enormous problems we’re all facing: the energy transition, the increasing demand for power, the need to manufacture goods at a rapid pace, distribute those in an interesting and sustainable way. So, the entire value chain of producing finished goods and manufacturing things requires this idea of radical collaboration.

And the “radical” just means that it’s going to take basically all elements of that value chain working together to achieve the demands of the future. Energy is the easy one. It’s daunting; the amount of energy that we need to meet the demands of the future is significant. At the same time, we’re trying to decarbonize those things and create a more sustainable future. That again becomes a confluence of things.

The responsible use of resources—not only from the energy side…but water, air, steam, gas, electricity—these are all elements that the resources in many cases. Electricity, of course, is finite. It's expensive. We just talk about the demand for it. So better managing that in a responsible way is top of mind for manufacturers, and frankly, anybody in the world today.

Water is another one in a lot of places in the world. Water is a scarce resource, and so more effective use of the world’s resources to manufacture finished goods, to operate infrastructure—like even data centers that use a lot of electricity, need water for cooling. That’s what we mean by responsible use of the world's resources. Yes, to achieve radical collaboration and transform the industry and the markets that we serve, we need to do that in a responsible, sustainable way.

And the last point on that, the last pillar on that, is advanced technologies. How can technology help us meet these objectives, if you like, or these goals? And technology has a huge role in that. On the radical collaboration side, we use technology to bring people together, to collaborate, to capture tribal knowledge, as we were talking about a bit earlier in the day.

That is the expertise that’s manifest in the workforce, the ever-aging workforce. And how do we digitally capture that using advanced technologies and synthesize that captured information and make it available for another generation, the newer, early careers generation that’s going to take on the energy challenge and the manufacturing challenges.

A lot of the other technologies that we talk about are enablers for this. So, enabling rapid collaboration is one thing, but using technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and different permutations of that, like predictive and prescriptive analytics to help better guide and inform the workforce to better optimize machinery and productivity and throughput.

Visualization technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, 1D and 2D information can help us envision the manufacturing infrastructure world around us and better interact with it, in a sense. And I think the concept of all this being backed by Big Data, 1D and 2D and 3D information, process, production information all come together, and we synthesize and use that data to drive all those different improvements. And so, those are maybe the highlights for those key pillars that we talked about earlier.

AVEVA’s industrial intelligence platform is built on Microsoft Azure and integrates with critical infrastructure and manufacturing assets.

MD: Talk about some of AVEVA’s products that help facilitate those pillars.

RM: We talked about digital transformation and what that means. We talked about some of the key tenets of these radical collaborations, responsible use [of] the world’s resources and sustainability, and, of course, tech for us. That all comes together in CONNECT, AVEVA’s industrial intelligence platform. It's a software capability, a platform. It’s an open and neutral platform, and vehicle to enable all these amazing things that we’re talking about.

It enables interoperability with lots of systems and sources across the value chain—that’s design systems, planning systems, simulation systems, production execution systems, maintenance and reliability systems. It amalgamates or integrates all these different pieces in the spirit of radical collaboration.

It’s built upon the tenet that our partner ecosystem, which is made up of thousands of experts, ISVs [independent software makers], OEMs, system integrators, value-added resellers, all participate in this. They use CONNECT technology and applications to deliver the last mile of innovation, manufacturing and critical infrastructure.

CONNECT is really the embodiment of all these tools and technologies that transcend the design, build, operate and optimize lifecycle that exists amongst the critical infrastructure and manufacturing markets.

MD: What exactly is feeding the rise of open-source solutions?

RM: There’s a lot of talk about openness in general—open systems, open standards, open source, as far as code goes. And I would just say, open collaboration amongst the peer groups and sharing data and things like that. This openness concept is fueled by a number of things.

One is, I just think there’s a realization that to solve these problems, what we face as an industry and as a species, if I could use that phrase. It’s going to take a community; all the great minds that we have. And so, the way to fuse together the great minds and intellect is through sharing and collaboration of ideas.

So, open exchanges of ideas, exchanging information in our world about machines and equipment is about exchanging information about performance, of how machines perform. How do they consume electricity and water and steam and air and gas and resources?

That open mindset of sharing that information, those systems and those sources amongst a broader peer group, we think will enable rapid acceleration and progress for the industry and for the markets that we serve. And hopefully, leave the planet a better place than we found it one day.

MD: So, is cost no longer the main motivation for open systems, or for agnostic systems?

RM: Yeah, I think it’s more than cost. I mean, certainly, people look at open systems as being a cost-sensitive thing, but in the end, you still are going to pay for that technology in one way or another. But I don’t think it’s necessarily about cost. The focus is really on innovation and results, and the best way to make that happen is through open and collaborative approaches.

But it doesn’t mean you can’t monetize those things as a manufacturer, as a producer, as a machine builder. I think the openness is more about rapid innovation, exchanging data and ideas to help move things forward. But certainly, cost comes up quite a bit. I think cost reduction is almost a benefit of implementing these practices in the long run.

: According to AVEVA’ chief product officer, Rob McGreevy, partners can leverage his company’s scalable capabilities and unlock new levels of sustainability and efficiency.

MD: To follow up on the limitations of open systems and agnostic/interoperable over closed-looped orchestration. Certainly, companies make the decision on going one way or the other. AVEVA proffers open systems. But that doesn’t mean that open orientations don’t have challenges.

RM: Yeah, so we're talking about open systems. There is a huge challenge. Applying open systems to manufacturing critical infrastructure means participating in hundreds of different systems that make up manufacturing or utilities. These systems and sources have different brand heritages, different protocols, different rules for interoperability.

We’ve made a history of doing that. We’ve been an open and neutral software company for more than 30 years with hundreds of different devices and protocols and drivers that interoperate with these different systems and sources. We’ve got a long history of making these open systems neutral and agnostic.

One of the challenges that you face with that is it’s quite expensive and costly to manage and maintain all these different protocols and systems. Because, if you’re going to bring all these sources together, bring together the elements of that value chain, you must understand the protocols that exist between them and how those systems behave and interoperate. Another challenge is complexity. But we’ve been doing this for a long time, so we think we have a good sense of how to do that in the industrial and manufacturing markets.

The other challenge with open and neutral could sometimes be that you lack specificity. What I mean by that is, if you build one machine or one piece of equipment and you just focus on that, you can make that perform at incredible rates or very high rates or make it highly specialized. But again, machinery and equipment don’t exist in a vacuum. They are participating in a production line, inside of a plant, inside of a network of plants, inside of a utility grid.

And so, I think it’s interesting to note that in the world that we live in, everything is hyper interconnected. The challenge is there about making sure that your systems are optimized with specificity but remaining open to the outside world is going to become an increasing necessity. And so, the case for open and neutral is quite strong, and companies that create closed systems will find themselves probably not able to participate or compete as much in the future.

MD: What about AI as a tool? Is it something that is being bolted onto existing technologies? Or does AI become its own revenue stream in itself?

RM: Great question. Is AI a standalone product or a bolt on? I don’t think so. I think AI becomes infused in all the things that we do in everyday life and then in the industrial world and thinking about machine building or equipment. If you think about the design process, we’ll infuse AI to help create better designs, better use of wiring systems and wiring guides, better use of piping, better use of different materials, for example, because AI can run scenarios and generate different sequences far faster than humans can.

AI won’t replace humans. It’ll just become a tool to help designers and engineers build better optimal configuration. AI, in that case, is infused in the design process. The same thing occurs in the construction process, when you start to procure materials and construct and build things. AI can also help there with managing schedules, looking at delays, looking at supplier management challenges and such.

Then on the operational side, AI also gets infused in the press practices to identify anomalies. “Hey, this vibration pattern doesn't look normal,” or “Hey, this heat profile doesn't look right.” Therefore, you might have a problem with this machinery, or begin to identify patterns of increased productivity, like, if we run these machines at this particular set of parameters, we know we can get better output.

AI becomes infused very much in all elements of life and in our world, all elements of our software, infusing the AI technologies to help empower the employees and the people that use our software every day.

MD: Consider AVEVA’s latest announcements such as the partnerships with Vulcan Energy Resources, a lithium company with a carbon neutral footprint, and with Oxford Quantum Circuits on delivering quantum computing services. What do they mean for AVEVA’s ecosystem? How do these relationships connect with AVEVA’s ecosystem?

RM: It all comes together through CONNECT. That’s the easy way to think about it. CONNECT is this the inflection point at which all these different pieces come together. It’s built atop open technology standards and tech stacks and platforms like Microsoft. What we do with Microsoft Azure is add domain and industry specificity that doesn’t exist in Microsoft.

What we do with partners, companies like Schneider Electric, for example, is extend the value of Schneider Electric’s electrical capabilities, for example, or industrial controls capabilities into CONNECT. Customers that want to take advantage of Schneider’s electrical tools capabilities and offers can do that through CONNECT.

And that extends to our partner ecosystem. All the other partners that have solutions, capabilities, delivery services, value added capabilities, all plug into CONNECT and offer their solutions. And it becomes this web, if you will, around CONNECT, this platform through which we bring together this community of experts and companies at large.

Rob McGreevy, chief product officer, AVEVA, announces the advancements in AVEVA’s CONNECT data services at AVEVA World 2024 in Paris.

MD: Final question: You have an interesting background in journalism, communications and computer science. What skill sets should engineers and the future workforce focus on now to help kickstart their careers and secure a path to staying gainfully employed?

RM: I guess my background is different from this industry, and the way I got into it was, I’m a career hobbyist. Curiosity is my specialty. I’m super-curious about all things in life. Technologies are one. From a very early age, I got involved in building computers and doing networking before the Internet existed. I’m afraid it ages me a little bit, but I’ve always managed to just pursue my interests with a voracious appetite and to constantly learn.

My background is atypical, but my hobbyist interest in technology and my ability to apply that to solve problems in the real world were what got me into this industry and helped me get to where I am today. What I would suggest to people is: Curiosity is No. 1. Be curious. Go after [your goal] by learning with relentless pursuit.

My background, 20 or 30 years ago in school, was interesting, but in a lot of regards irrelevant. Think about artificial intelligence and all these [advancements]. Irrelevant is probably crude. Of course, my education was a building block for me. What mattered is what I learned over the last 10, 15, 20 and 30 years. In my experiences, I constantly learn the new trends, new technologies, new commercial business practices.

If I had to give advice here, start with the foundation in STEM, finance, computer, wherever your interests lie. Follow your curiosities and just be relentless in continuing to learn how to learn, because the world moves at such a fast pace. If you want to advance in the modern-day world you have to continue to keep updating your script, your skills. Be evergreen and updated.