A Transformative Journey: Powering the Future with Data, AI, and Collaboration

A Transformative Journey: Powering the Future with Data, AI, and Collaboration | SPONSORED

Any opportunity to surround yourself with smart, enthusiastic people with a vision of creating a better state of, well anything, in my opinion, is time well spent and an opportunity to be taken.  This year’s Impact 2024, the first annual event hosted by Cognite, for Cognite users, was exactly this type of opportunity.

I attended Impact 2024, Cognite’s first user’s conference, where over five hundred passionate individuals from a myriad of different industries and walks of life descended upon Houston, Texas to collaborate, learn, and gain insight into how best to embark on or continue down a path to digitization for their respective organizations.  Cognite offers solutions to glean insight and create value for their clients and partners by offering tools that capture, contextualize, and analyze the exabytes of diverse data they respectively generate.  Organizations with offerings and expertise from agriculture to energy, and chemical manufacturing to marine biology and oceanography were in attendance and shared their plans, achievements, and common goals for leveraging AI, data and the tools offered by the team at Cognite to catalyze and enable their path forward.

At the heart of discussions was the profound impact of data and AI on industry.  By integrating data from multiple streams, be it factories, refineries, and plants, or scientific exploration, Cognite enables organizations to draw powerful relationships between data points and, ultimately, transform their operations for the better.  From reducing carbon emissions, to capturing oceanic data on krill and seismic anomalies, to opportunities for improving operational efficiency, this approach ensures that businesses can continue to grow sustainably while also making a positive impact on the planet.  Cognite’s mission is clear: to leverage data and artificial intelligence to consolidate and extract value from data that enables organizations to optimize processes, drive profitability and enable environmental responsibility.

As the event unfolded, three key themes emerged.  The rise of autonomous industries, the role of open ecosystems, and the value of partnership and collaboration were central to the conversation.  The organizations at Impact 2024 seemed to collectively realize that the potential of AI and data lies not just in the technology itself, but in how that technology is applied across industries.  What sets Cognite apart is its commitment to openness—allowing customers and partners to build on top of their platform, fostering collaboration, and driving innovation across sectors.  From large-scale chemical plants to energy companies, customers are already realizing the immense value of combining generative AI with their proprietary data, unlocking operational efficiencies that were once thought impossible.  One such example is the Aker BP Yggdrasil project, an extraordinarily complex, multi-facility offshore oil field on the Norwegian continental shelf, set to be operational by 2027.   Beyond the bleeding edge technological innovations of the facility, the Yggdrasil site will be completely unmanned.  The initiative exemplifies how Aker BP applies its learnings from past digital efforts.  In parallel with the construction of the physical facility, Aker is creating a digital twin, to enable real-time monitoring and optimization as the project unfolds and ultimately goes into production at which point it will be maintained by two remote operators.

The advancements in industrial data platforms and contextualization have been nothing short of remarkable.  By making sense of data from different systems—whether through 3D models, images, or engineering diagrams—Cognite is enabling companies to build a powerful industrial knowledge graph, which can be used by AI to solve complex problems faster and more effectively than ever before.  This new era of human-centric AI is not about replacing humans but enhancing their capabilities, giving them the tools to make better decisions, faster.  Without the buy in from the people who will be affected by any new innovation or technology the probability of success is unlikely.  Engaging these individuals early on in the process to solve the issues they find challenging, mundane, or highly repetitive, is critical to driving adoption and creating internal champions to further catalyze adoption.   In a fascinating case study shared by one of Cognite’s partners, we learned about the transformative potential of data and AI in the chemical manufacturing sector.  A plant operator described how the implementation of mobile devices powered by Cognite’s platform has drastically improved operational efficiency.  From accessing real-time inspection data to diagnosing and resolving factory shutdowns, the integration of data and AI has allowed workers to make quicker, more informed decisions, minimizing downtime and maximizing output.  The field worker’s story stood out as a powerful reminder that technology, when deployed thoughtfully, empowers the human workforce rather than replacing it.

Another highlight came from Knut Vidvei, SVP Head of Product Management at Cognite, who discussed the company’s product strategy and its focus on building a more autonomous industrial future.  Knut pointed out that while generative AI and large language models hold tremendous potential, their effectiveness hinges on the availability of high-quality, contextualized data.  This industrial data problem, as he called it, continues to be a barrier, but one that Cognite has been tackling head-on for the past several years.  Through advancements in contextualization algorithms and the creation of an industrial knowledge graph, Cognite is laying the groundwork for a future where AI can seamlessly integrate with industrial systems to deliver real, scalable value.

Looking ahead; the potential is immense.  The open ecosystems and marketplace solutions that Cognite is fostering are accelerating the time to value for customers, allowing them to leverage ready-made templates and solutions to drive even greater efficiencies.  With Cognite Embedded, customers are able to build on a modern data platform without starting from scratch, giving them the freedom to focus on their unique expertise while Cognite provides the infrastructure.  As the power of Generative AI continues to accelerate through offerings like Cognite Data Fusion, so will the value generation by the organizations that fully embrace these solutions.

Sponsored by Cognite

About the author

This article was written by Greg Orloff, Industry Executive, IIoT World. Greg previously served as the CEO of Tangent Company, inventor of the Watercycle™, the only commercial residential direct potable reuse system in the country.