Vijay Jaswal - CIO of APJ ME&A at IFS.

Global technology leader, focused on aviation and defence, telecommunications, oil and gas utilities, manufacturing, construction and engineering and service industries. IFS has established a worldwide network in over 80 countries and accumulated an enviable depth of multi-faceted expertise since its inception in the early 1980s.

The scale of the impact of IFS today can be highlighted through the examples of it enabling 310 million passengers a year to fly safely through the aircraft it maintains; 200 billion packages a year are sustainably produced and distributed by the manufacturers it serves and 200 billion people a day use IFS-serviced elevators and walkways.

As it has evolved, so has IFS’ offering of end-to-end, cloud-native asset management solutions, whether as an on-prem, or partially or fully-hosted cloud option. Asset management is absolutely critical to the IFS client base and the organisation continuously pushes technology boundaries to take this to optimum efficiency levels.

Says Vijay Jaswal, IFS’ CTO for the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), Middle East and Africa (MEA) regions: “For our clients, uptime is absolutely critical. Our client portfolio holds many thousands of assets that need regular maintaining and servicing; from production lines and aircraft engines, to telecom masts and heavy-duty mining equipment. This demands that we always have the right engineers, with the right skill-set, with the right parts, in the right place, at the right time.

“We take care of the entire lifecycle of an asset, from procurement, implementation, operation, maintenance and sourcing of parts. We also manage the refurbishing of an asset in order to ‘sweat’ the asset to maximise the investment in it, and also really supporting the circular economy. Everything we do pivots around having appropriately analysed sources of data, available at all times.”

Jaswal says technology trends are advancing and enhancing asset management in multiple ways, with artificial intelligence (AI) playing a leading part, adding that a significant amount of AI is embedded in the IFS ERP solutions offering.

“Imagine if a piece of machinery usually maintained every six months has the intelligence to tell us when it needs attention or a part is going to fail. Machinery may not need attention for an additional two or three months and pushing out maintenance can help our clients towards more uptime and cost control.

“If we use sensors, combined with other elements of Industry 4.0, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and cyber-physical systems (CPS), we can, for example, measure vibration or temperature. As an example, if we know a certain part will fail if its temperature goes above 60°C (from historic data), sensors on the part can inform the system of a temperature increase to 60°C , and again we know from historical data that it will fail in around two weeks. We can get the right part ready to dispatch with an engineer with the appropriate expertise and resolve replacement timeously – without incurring any unplanned down-time.

“Remote assistance is also possible and using IFS’ augmented capability, an engineer requiring the advice of

a senior engineer can use a cellphone or tablet to demonstrate an issue and the senior engineer located in another geography can help take the repair or replacement to the desired level of outcome.”

Jaswal says another trend is the increasing importance of protecting the environment and pressure on reporting a company’s ESG efforts. Being able to delay maintenance means less fuel pollution is being put into the environment with less frequent trips by engineers. Another ESG example he cites is in the mining sector where truck brakes charge electric vehicles as they go downhill, enabling them to have the power to get back uphill to their stations.

“The mining industry is actually very technically advanced, with driverless vehicles and some mines even having 3D printers on site to create parts and save time.” While the IFS cloud solution is a comprehensive ERP offering, Jaswal likens the IFS cloud to a large Lego bag. “Clients don’t have to take the full IFS offering, but can add as they grow. They can start on-prem and move to hosted cloud, or stay with what works and simply adapt as they need to.

“We use Microsoft Azure as our global partner and we have extensive knowledge built up over the many years of our relationship with Microsoft. Also, in the South African context, MS Azure has a datacentre in the country and information stays within South Africa’s borders, which is very important to such government agencies as defence. “However, if a client wishes to go with another cloud provider, or have a hybrid partner network, that is their choice.”

Jaswal says over 500 existing IFS clients have moved into its managed services hosted cloud with their selected services. He says that while some organisations are simply not ready to move from an on-prem environment, an increasing number are looking for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), recognising that SaaS enables them to stick to their core business and not have to employ IT teams to manage their technology environments.

“We are also seeing many of our global clients moving parts of their ERP requirements, such as CRM, across for hosting and their different types of data need to be integrated – which is a service we offer via our partner Boomi to address the problem of silos, and connect relevant enterprise data together, regardless of where it resides.

“There are a number of benefits to moving to using IFS cloud, including our 99.98% average uptime. Plus our clients appreciate our efforts at keeping their systems evergreen through twice yearly updates, which on average take around three hours to upgrade. Historically these types of product updates used to take weeks or months due to clients adding extra layers of functionality to their environments. IFS Cloud negates the need to add extra complexity by having built in process workflow and API management capabilities. These updates also mean our clients can capitalise on the latest, most relevant technologies, without needing to run expensive or lengthy pilot projects.

“With a responsive, people-first design, IFS Cloud has been built to delight whether at home, out in the field, or on the warehouse floor – and it comes with the IFS Lifecycle Experience and portals that support how our clients buy, implement, operate and extend every step of the way,” he concludes.

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