During the feasibility study, Talent Swarm undertook a risk assessment to uncover the biggest potential political, environmental and social threats to the sustained development of the project – ranging from the newer, collaborative working model, to the ambitious challenge of a market with established players and countries with different and beneficial financial contexts.
This work then continued through an assessment of any potential legal impediments and the need to safeguard intellectual property, and consideration of how the company could scale up effectively and what such a scale up would look like over the next eight years. Similarly, following additional research, there was a more detailed study of the current market, and an explanation of where Talent Swarm would fit – and how it stretched the current state of affairs and document its advantages over competitors.
But the crucial piece of work during the study was a series of focused interviews with both business experts and a selection of current and future clients. These conversations allowed Talent Swarm to shape the business and software / product offer into a form that would be most attractive to other industrial plants. This essential period of industrial learning revealed:
- For most clients, their initial priority is to have updated and accurate 2D or 3D plans of their facilities. These then become the foundation for further digital development.
- Budgets are very restricted and the relatively low cost and fast execution of the scanning phase, compared to tedious manual measurements, made them choose our services.
- Although they seem truly intrigued by the immersive environment platform, at this time those capabilities are considered advanced and have been tabled for future consideration. Further access to demos and studies of real implementation among clients will help support future decision-making.
- Talent Swarm is a service, not a competitor. Some of the surveyed clients explained that their current Digital Twin offering, General Electrics’ Predix platform, made them uncomfortable because their private data was managed and held by a company that could then compete with them in the industrial market. Talent Swarm gives customers peace of mind by emphasizing that the data belongs to the customer – as such the Talent Swarm platform is supportive to their businesses, not combative.
Consulting and prototyping with commercial clients also revealed the challenge of estimating the time necessary for 3D scanning from plans and photos received from the client. In the case of one customer, Ravago, the actual scanning time was 50% more than initially estimated, due to the multiple levels of the plant. Given that the initial estimate was 2 days, this was not a major setback, but rather a lesson learned for the future. In short, it is an absolute requirement to walk the plant to be scanned prior to the scanning work itself to obtain an accurate estimate of the time required. Similarly, Talent Swarm learned that different scanners are needed to properly scan all the areas of the plant – a high-precision 3D laser mounted on a tripod, which is good for existing plants but cannot always be set up in tight areas. In those hard-to-reach areas smaller hand-held scanners are needed to avoid missing critical areas to be scanned. In plants where 3D plans already exist, and lower resolution is acceptable to create “As-Built” plans, a different model of portable backpack scanner is ideal.
Following advice from business experts, in order to further segment offerings to increase the chances of landing digitalization projects from clients, Talent Swarm has elected to segment the offering according to the following principles:
- “Divide and Conquer” Scan Smaller Areas: Instead of digitalizing an entire industrial plant, ask the client to determine the part or precise section of the plant that is critical to monitor closely, even down to the Component Level, i.e. for a company specializing in industrial maintenance.
- Pareto Principle Top Level Industrial Plant Monitoring: Instead of attempting to document all the sensors of the plant, help the client to identify those values that are most critical to an overall effective monitoring, using the Pareto Principle “80% of the value is obtained with 20% of the effort”. i.e. as in the remote monitoring of critical operational values of a large desalination plant being operated in a foreign country by inexperienced personnel.
- Immersive Collaborative Work Environment: As an adjunct to the above, the creation of a Collaborative Work Environment (CWE) with human avatars and mixed reality hardware. Also, oriented towards the proper maintenance of remotely located complex industrial plants, in order to avoid costly, repetitive and wasteful trips by experts. This also creates a secure platform, yet open to independent consultants who may assist in resolving problems.
- Simulate Before Building at System Level (Design Phase): The simulation of a critical assemblies in the development and prototyping phase that allows the client to optimize its performance and guarantee is proper functioning when put into production, i.e. a manufacturer of metal subassemblies for automotive applications.
- Equipment Level (Design Phase): Similar to the 4. above, but applied to an individual component, i.e. the behaviour of an individual fan blade of a turbine.
- Process Monitoring: Full scale, real-time Digital Twins of modern factories that are controlled and connected directly with the virtual customers that request production online. Management needs to be able to constantly watch, analyse and reap the benefits of the processed data that the entire process generates.
