Speaking of Service Podcast

Chris MacDonald, PTC’s Head of AI and Analytics, and Joe Biron, General Manager, Strategic Missions Products at Microsoft, discuss the adoption of connected products strategies and how harnessing the data stream of your connected products and underlying data strategies can unlock business value.

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Read Chris MacDonald´s perspective on predictive maintenance in this related interview.

John Carroll, CEO & Founder of the Service Council speaks with Chris MacDonald about the state of market execution and adoption, whether predictive programs are meeting expectations, and how a proactive analytics journey can get back on track.

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Read the Service Council's Research Insight on the Journey to Predictive Service

Chris MacDonald, head of AI & Analytics speaks with Anthony Moffa, Senior Director of Smart Connected Products at PTC to discuss how to successfully navigate the hurdles at the beginning or during the process of implementing a successful smart connected product strategy and how to use lessons learned to improve performance and outcomes.

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Learn how to leverage your connected data and simultaneously apply three key methods of prediction to your service strategy

Chris MacDonald sits with Billy Milligan, Solutions Development Lead at Howden to discuss the smart approach Howden applies to incorporate more sophisticated analytics by prototyping and listening to users.

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Discover ways to leverage connectivity and predictive analytics to proactively service products in the field!

Chris MacDonald is joined by Chris Joynt, AI & Analytics Translator to give his perspective on the opportunity that service events present to completely transform customer relationships and better capture expert knowledge for a smart long term AI strategy.

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Explore a transformation roadmap approach organizations are advised to follow to bring AI to life.

Aly Pinder, IDC’s Service Innovation and Connected Products Program Director, speaks with Chris Wolff on how shifting service to a more remote model provides significant value around revenue growth, cost reduction, sustainability—not to mention uptime and performance improvements for customers.

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Read the corresponding IDC Report: Remote Service Without Losing Customer Engagement and the Human Experience

Andy Hay, President & CEO of Sysmex America discusses their path to digital transformation and how they kept a focus on driving health outcomes while executing on a smart connected products strategy.

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Sysmex leverages the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) to disrupt the blood testing market – Check out how!

Chris MacDonald speaks with Danny Jackson, Digital Transformation Director and Brian Allred, Global Director, Data Analytics and Digital Technologies at Autoliv about their digital transformation journey and how they've evaluated that strategic value of data.

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Read the supporting report: Improve Service with Remote Condition Monitoring

Chris MacDonald speaks with Yuri Hovanski, Associate Professor, Department of Manufacturing Engineering at BYU and Nathan Hoyt, Internet of Things Software Developer, Bell and Howell about their research and how faculty and students at Bringham Young University are leveraging IoT data and platform technology to demonstrate how small manufacturers can identify, execute, and implement solutions including analytics to anticipate problems before they occur.

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Read the RTInsights editorial into Integrated Predictive Analytics: Enabling the Transition to Proactive Maintenance and New Business Models

Chris MacDonald speaks with Haroon Abbu, Vice President, Digital, Data, and Analytics at Bell and Howell about how they use data to support remote service calls and troubleshoot before sending technicians out to customers.

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Chris Joynt, AI & Analytics Translator joins us again to give his perspective on the responsibility that everyone—not just data scientists and AI engineers—must share in when it comes to implementing AI at scale and putting a strong emphasis on quality data.

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Are You Ready to Capture Value from Predictive Service Today? Take the Quiz and Find Out!

Manufacturers are leaning more heavily on digital tools to deliver service experiences, including digital communications channels and remote service capabilities to reduce costs, increase productivity and heighten customer satisfaction. New research from The Service Council profiles the impact of digital transformation progress in manufacturing and particularly among service teams, along with the challenges and rewards service leaders are seeing.  This episode featuring John Carroll, CEO and Founder of the Service Council and Chis Wolff, VP of Strategic Partnerships, will cover new data documenting current trends in dispatch cost and technology implementation, along with timely analysis of customer and company expectations for remote service management.

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Review the Service Council Report: Remote Service Becoming the Standard

You made the business case for a smart connected products strategy, to transform field service or to support a new, digital business initiative. Delivering the necessary performance requires a short “time to value”, particularly in an environment of rising interest rates. That means that industrial IOT technology implementations must be as simple and quick and that the ongoing “total cost of ownership” is as low as possible—both necessary to ensure hitting the required program ROI. Learn how aftermarket business teams create smart connected product strategies and are achieving those goals today, all the while, growing margins and making the best use of resources.

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Read Lora's Blog: Service Your Products Better with a Connected Strategy

Sani-Matic provides equipment that’s critical to manufacturers in the food & beverage, and bio-pharm industries. It assures that systems are ready from batch-to-batch or are cleared for new product runs—without cross contamination or sanitation issues that impact throughput, cost and final product quality. Learn how the connected data streams from the SanitrendTM System drives customer value and aftermarket revenue for the company and therefore providing true digital transformation in their manufacturing industry.

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Find out more about Sani-Matic and Cloud Security

Working with an integration partner is not a cost adder.  The right ecosystem shortens your project's time-to-value and can pull the associated ROI into the right range.  That's only true if you're not working with the right partner with the right experience and in an organized, effective fashion.  Lower your Time to value and Total cost of ownership by getting the right advice from the right team.

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Discover more on how IoT for Service drives better business results

It is no longer a question as to whether companies should connect their products. The question is now how fast they can get to desired value. Today we are going to talk about how to think about implementation and how to get the fastest time to value and the lowest total cost of owner. It is no longer why? or whether? or if? It´s how and how fast?

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Discover more on how IoT for Service drives better business results

Condition based maintenance plus (CBM+) is a US Department of Defense initiative to improve the readiness of a diverse set of military assets—from air frames to ships.  The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) has said that when CBM+ is executed properly, it ensures:  the right maintenance is performed at the right time, for the right cost, with improved operational availability.  There are a lot of learnings the industrial sector can apply that the military and defense have already demonstrated.

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Discover more on how IoT for Service drives better business results

Original equipment manufacturers like Karl Storz are looking to systems that provide their customers with the most current software updates that increase uptime, compliance, and cybersecurity. But those systems must also provide a fast time to value for the ORs that use them. Listen to how Marco Zeller Director of Remote Service and Io(M)T at Karl Storz, addresses these points and how they keep equipment safe and current in a constant effort to improve patient outcomes. 

With the current economic environment companies are viewing field service and their operations completely different than they were 10-15 years ago. Service is no longer a cost center but a profit center. Listen to John Carroll, CEO Service Council speak to how he sees the current stage of field service and what are the predictions for the future and what should field service organizations look out for.

The time for service transformation is now. Current economic conditions make service profitability and asset longevity more important than ever. Leaders can expand on early efforts, apply lessons learned from initial projects, and drive repeatable value that they can grow over time. Those that have not started, on the other hand, likely face competitive threats from more mature organizations. We speak with Jim Brown President of Tech-Clarity who has researched the service market to hear his perspectives on field service and current developments.

Haroon Abbu is an accomplished leader with over 20 years of industry experience in leading technology enabled business transformation using digital technologies and advanced data analytics. He is currently leading a team of data scientists and solution architects to build next-generation analytics products and service capabilities powered by IoT, machine learning, and advanced analytics to drive service efficiencies and data monetization. He is a frequent keynote speaker and a panelist at various industry events and has published his work in business magazines and scholarly journals. He recently co-authored a book titled, Trust: The Winning Formula for Digital Leaders, a Practical Guide for Digital Transformation.

Brian Allred is a global technology leader with over 20 years of experience delivering technical strategies and data-driven solutions. In his current role, he is responsible for Autoliv’s data analytics and digitalization technologies, focusing on big data, data sciences, data transformation, advanced analytics, and business intelligence. Brian works closely with executive management to deliver strategic digitalization initiatives and is committed to driving digital change.

Pete oversees all product direction for the food, beverage, personal care, nutraceutical, and bio-pharm industries. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical and Biological Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, leading him to engineering roles in product development, technical writing, and project management.  More recently, Pete has moved into Product Management roles where he now manages the marketing, product development, and product management teams and activities for Sani-Matic systems, components, and services.

Pete continuously develops his hygienic design and process technical knowledge through participation in ASME Bioprocessing Equipment (BPE) Committee Meetings as a committee member and task group leader, and 3-A Work Group Member Meetings. Pete is also a Preventive Controls Qualified Individual (PCQI) and is Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HAACP) certified.

Joe Biron leads Azure Product Marketing for Strategic Missions products at Microsoft. The Strategic Missions portfolio focused on recent and emerging innovations to power the next generation of cloud computing including Azure IoT, Azure for Operators, Azure Space, and Azure Quantum. 

Joe has spent his career in advanced technology, serving as a software engineer, systems architect, CTO and General Manager, always with an emphasis on forming product and market strategies to match technological breakthroughs to business value.

Jim Brown founded Tech-Clarity in 2002 and has over 30 years of experience in the manufacturing and software industries. Jim is an experienced researcher, author, and speaker and enjoys engaging with people with a passion to improve business performance through digital enterprise strategies and supporting software technology. Jim is actively researching the impact of digital transformation and technology convergence in the manufacturing industries.

John Carroll has authored hundreds of case studies, articles and benchmark reports and has delivered speeches around the world on topics ranging from field service and labor strategies to emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, IoT and more.

Lora focuses on the solutions for Smart Connected Products within the IIoT ThingWorx Platform. She previously worked at the PTC Center of Excellence for IIOT where she collaborated closely with customers using the ThingWorx Platform for their own Smart Connected Product applications. Before PTC, Lora worked as a Release Engineer, Development Tools Lead, and DevOps Engineer for various enterprise systems.

She holds a Bachelor of Science of Engineering with an Electrical Emphasis from Grand Valley State University.

Andy Hay is driven by a passion for laboratory efficiency and improving healthcare. He sets the strategic direction for business growth and to advance market leadership for Sysmex across a region which includes all the Americas. Andy is also part of the global leadership and steering committee for the company, helping to design the strategies and build the relationships which are essential for Sysmex to be successful around the world.

Andy holds a fellowship in medical laboratory sciences, specializing in hematology and blood group serology, from John Moore’s University in Liverpool, UK as well as an advanced management program degree from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining Sysmex in 1989, Andy had a decade-long career in hospital laboratories and working as a medical technologist.

Dr. Yuri Hovanski earned his B.S. Degree in Mechanical Engineering at Brigham Young University, and then completed his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at Washington State University. Dr. Hovanski worked as a lead mechanical systems engineer for Bechtel National, Inc. prior to joining Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where he worked as a senior research engineer for more than a decade.

Dr. Yuri Hovanski earned his B.S. Degree in Mechanical Engineering at Brigham Young University, and then completed his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at Washington State University. Dr. Hovanski worked as a lead mechanical systems engineer for Bechtel National, Inc. prior to joining Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where he worked as a senior research engineer for more than a decade.

In 2016, Dr. Hovanski joined the faculty of Brigham Young University as an associate professor of manufacturing engineering. He actively participates in numerous professional societies (SME, AWS, ASM, TMS, and SAE), as well as serving on various organizational committees and in division leadership roles. Having applied two decades of research, Dr. Hovanski has focused on the development of low-cost solutions to facilitate industrial application of friction stir welding.

His collaborative research efforts globally have led to numerous advancements in closed-loop control and real-time defect detection. The merger of these efforts in intelligent manufacturing processes with the smart factory has been the focus of his most recent research. As a developer of university curriculum focused on Industry 4.0, he was recognized as one of the top 20 academics in smart manufacturing in 2021 by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.

Nathan Hoyt recently graduated from Brigham Young University where he spent six years completing his BS and MS, both in manufacturing engineering. He spent his last three years at BYU working in the Smart Manufacturing research lab, led by Dr. Yuri Hovanski. During this time, Nathan contributed significantly to the development of university curriculum focused on Industry 4.0. In addition, he conducted Industry 4.0 research using various lab-scale factories and has recently submitted an article to the journal of Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence.

Danny Jackson delivers the practical application of technology to improve business processes. With over 20 years of experience in Manufacturing Operations, Supply Chain Planning, and Information Technology Management, Danny brings a unique perspective on how digital technologies can be leveraged to improve efficiency throughout the entire value chain.

Chris Joynt began his career in a traditional sales role at IBM selling big data, BI (Business Intelligence), and data mining tools. He then took a position at a machine learning startup where he handled all functions related to revenue growth—from marketing and positioning to leading services engagements. For the startup to pursue an ML-as-infrastructure strategy, learning various software architectures to understand how ML (Machine Learning) might create value was key, as AI was still a nascent field.

PTC acquired that company to integrate those very ML capabilities into the ThingWorx Platform. With IoT and digital transformation, there has been a push to better map those data flows to real world business and operational processes which has necessitated the creation of digital assets that could be quickly reconfigured to offer maximum adaptability. Chris' previous ML learnings have been invaluable in this current landscape where sensor data, legacy operational technology, and IT systems pull together to model processes where AI is used to make practical predictions.

Chris MacDonald joined PTC through the acquisition of Coldlight in May of 2015. Upon joining PTC, Chris led the Analytics Business Development team globally. In 2018, Chris formed and led the Global Analytics Center of Excellence with responsibility for all analytics business development, field engineering, and services for PTC’s IoT business. Most recently, Chris joined the Digital Transformation Solutions organization to ensure PTC’s solutions deliver rich insights to our customers in addition to his team’s charter to ensure customer success with AI & Analytics in the field.

Through his work at companies such as Xerox, SAP, Oracle, Coldlight, and now PTC, Chris has helped companies across every vertical harness the value of data-driven innovation. Leveraging his expertise in IoT Analytics and Machine Learning, Chris remains focused on unlocking potential opportunities in evolving data ecosystems.

Jeff Miller is a Director in the Industrial High Tech Sector at Kalypso, A Rockwell Automation Company. He is responsible for Digital Performance Management solutions and services in North America. In this role, Jeff works with organizations to maximize the value of their investments in enterprise technologies, IoT and AR. He engages with customers to design and deploy digital technology solutions that derive insights from data, increase efficiencies and improve performance across manufacturing and supply chain operations.

Jeff has invested his career working with product and service organizations at the convergence of business and technology. He has helped companies achieve their strategic business and supply chain objectives through digital capability investments across extended value chains, manufacturing, logistics, service and commercial operations.

Prior to joining Rockwell Automation and Kalypso Jeff served customers through senior industry roles at PTC, Accenture, DXC and KPMG. Earlier in his career, he managed manufacturing and supply chain operations at Westinghouse’s Nuclear Fuel and Power Generation businesses.

Jeff earned an MS in Industrial Management from the Florida Institute of Technology, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tennessee.

Dr. Billy Milligan, BEng(Hons) MSc PhD CEng MInstMC MIET, is an experienced controls and instrumentation design engineer having worked on the design, installation and testing of instrumentation and control systems used in the oil and gas sector, the water industry, bulk solids handling, and rotating equipment since leaving school. He is a Chartered Control and Instrument Engineer and a member of the Institute of Measurement and Control, the Institution of Engineering and Technology and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Scientific Instrument Makers. He currently sits on the council within the Institute of Measurement and Control as Honorary Secretary and is also Chair of its Digital Transformation Special Interest Group.

Anthony has extensive experience designing, manufacturing, and implementing diagnostic systems in a variety of industries including aerospace, nuclear power, and petrochemical.  Prior to joining PTC he was responsible for the design and implementation of 2 IoT programs, one in life safety and the other in the life sciences arenas.  He has been a long-time contributor to service research advisory councils managed by Aberdeen and The Service Council, holds a Mechanical Engineering Degree from Villanova University and has multiple Six Sigma certifications .

Aly Pinder Jr. leads IDC’s research and analysis of the service and customer support markets, including topics such as field service, warranty operations, service parts management, and how these service areas impact the overall customer experience. This research extends to innovative technologies like 3D printing for service operations, augmented and virtual reality in field support, and the use of IoT and advanced analytics for remotely monitoring and managing assets. Mr. Pinder Jr. establishes a roadmap for manufacturers to better understand how technology can transform service and support functions to drive exceptional customer experiences and value, profitable revenue growth, and improved efficiency in the field.

Prior to his time with IDC, Mr. Pinder Jr. was an analyst researching the service and customer support market for ten years at The Service Council and the Aberdeen Group. He has established himself as a thought leader for the trends and best practices impacting manufacturers regarding field service, service parts management, and the IoT.

Randy Thompson began his career doing plant floor automation, PLC and SCADA projects. This lead to more than 20 years of Internet of Things experience with manufacturing companies in the medical, technology, financial, and industrial markets. As the leader of technical presales and then customer success for Axeda (acquired by PTC) he was involved in the planning and execution of IoT projects for more than 150 companies. He also worked on IoT at Wind River (Intel), Bsquare, and Dell Technologies. While all IoT projects are different, experience has shown how they all have similar implementation needs and success factors. As a Senior Solution Architect and Business Analyst for Transition Technologies PSC, Mr. Thompson works with clients to define project requirements, reduce risk, and accelerate time to value.

Mr. Thompson has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas and an MBA from Bryant University.

Chris Wolff, “Wolffie”, joined PTC in November 2022 to establish a Field Alliance function within PTC Americas sales organization. Reporting to the DVP of Sales, Wolffie and the Field Alliance Managers help PTC sellers accelerate and expand customer value, leading complex ecosystems.

Previously Wolffie led Dell Technologies Office of Global OEM and IOT Partnerships. making Dell’s partnerships with technology, IOT, software, cloud and reseller partners simple, predictable and profitable. She chaired the Dell Technologies IOT go-to-market committee, unifying Dell EMC, VMWare and Dell’s strategically aligned businesses behind award-winning solutions. She represented Dell OEM in Dell’s Digital Cities initiative.

Wolffie spent 18 years establishing Dimension Data’s presence in the USA, and helping the Group grow from a 1000 to 30,000 employees globally. She established the Group’s solutions marketing, sales development, and talent engagement functions. She served as Dimension Data’s SVP, Group Cisco Alliance, accountable to Cisco’s Executive Leadership Team and the Dimension Data Group Executive Committee for the $4 billion partnership. In 2010 Dimension Data was acquired by NTT Holdings and now operates as NTT Limited.

Wolffie has advised Dell, Secureworks and Seagate on GTM strategy. She serves pm the boards of the MIT Enterprise Forum, Duke AIMS, and SKAEL Inc. She spends her free time mentoring women in STEM, golfing and cheering the Duke Blue Devils.

Marco Zeller (Master of Eng.), Director of Remote Service and Io(M)T, has an education in software engineering and business management.

He has worked for Storz for almost 16 years. He started as a software engineer and transitioned to different roles, from software architect to system engineer and finally to Directory of Remote Service and Io(M)T.

His passion is the integration of devices with business processes at the customer and the company side to digitalize the workflows with and for the products. His goal is to create a smooth and unique digital experience for the management of the products.