As part of its release of the Ovation 4.0 Automation Platform, Emerson is adding transformative generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) that will enhance data to inform decisions, helping power and water companies accelerate growth, improve efficiencies, and drive more predictive, reliable, and resilient performance to their operations. Below, Bob Yeager, president of Emerson’s power and water business, highlights some of what this transformative technology can offer.
MPT: How did you recognize the need for generative AI in the latest Ovation rollout?
Bob Yeager: With the digital transformation of the power and water industries, utilities and municipalities now have vast amounts of rich production, reliability, safety, and sustainability data for their operations—yet much of it is fragmented and siloed. Operators require a modern, future-proof computing environment that can confidently mine large and complex data sets and harness the power of GenAI for better, more efficient operational insights.
Emerson’s Ovation 4.0 Automation Platform with integrated and dedicated GenAI deployment, trained on a secure foundation of knowledge-based data, will augment workforce expertise and thought processes to enhance productivity by prioritizing and automating tasks. The platform will provide predictive guidance and recommend appropriate actions to increase reliability, improve customer experiences and optimize overall operations.
MPT: How will this addition benefit Ovation users?
Bob Yeager: While global power operators are experiencing unprecedented demands, we are also on the precipice of technological advances that will forever change how we and our customers work. The digital revolution is generating so much valuable data that our Ovation Automation Platform with GenAI can harvest to create accessible, usable insights to inform smarter and more timely action.
Through its AI-based capabilities, the new platform will help support workforce empowerment; remote operations; reliable, continuous operations; grid optimization; and security. Initially released on Microsoft Azure’s OpenAI service, the Ovation GenAI will also be available on other large language models that rely on closed, proprietary, and secure data sets.
MPT: Do you see AI as a tool that’s here to stay? What does the future hold for these systems?
Bob Yeager: Today’s most forward-thinking power and water companies will use our new Ovation 4.0 Automation Platform with GenAI to help sort through their vast amounts of data. By contextualizing data from the intelligent field, edge, and cloud to make better, safer decisions, this technology will enable what we call “Boundless Automation,” breaking down data silos to liberate data and unleash the power of software.
Emerson announced its new Ovation GenAI today at its annual Ovation Users Group Conference in Pittsburgh. Emerson is a global technology and software company providing innovative solutions for the world’s essential industries. For more information, visit www.emerson.com.