IFS today announced it has signed an agreement to acquire Falkonry, Inc. a California-based industrial AI software company that provides automated, high-speed data analysis to the manufacturing and defense industries.
The addition of Falkonry’s self-learning anomaly detection solution to IFS’s existing enterprise simulation and AI-based scheduling and optimization capabilities supports IFS’ strategy to use AI pervasively to provide end-to-end intelligent insights in EAM and across ERP, MES, field service management, enterprise service management, and planning and scheduling optimization technology.
The convergence of artificial intelligence and industrial processes has become increasingly crucial for organizations seeking to enhance productivity through data. In an exclusive briefing with Plant Services, Falkonry founder and CEO Nikunj Mehta observed that this agreement represents a step forward for AI. “One of the big challenges that AI has had is the lack of industrializable use cases,” Mehta said. This agreement “is an indicator of the readiness of this type of AI for industrial adoption,” and should provide greater visibility into what makes AI successful in the industrial workplace.
On the asset management side, this agreement continues the journey of industry toward a future state where operations data are mapped onto machine data to generate deeper insights into the health of industrial assets. “The asset management community has been challenged with using condition monitoring characteristics in their planning process, and for the most part, they have not been able to exploit SCADA data effectively,” added Mehta, “IFS is an organization that knows very well how to manage predictive data well, and in Falkonry, there is a way to exploit all of the operations data to match it against the predictive data.”
IFS CEO Darren Roos, commented: “Falkonry is unique in the market because its technology is agnostic and also it does not require data scientists. These are great differentiators for Falkonry that mean the solution is both scalable and low-cost to implement – two fundamental attributes that very much align to our own values.”
Mehta added, “we are thrilled to join forces with IFS and looking forward to combining our unique strengths to provide a truly compelling value proposition to our existing customers as well as IFS’s customers. Becoming part of IFS will enable us to further innovate and extend the value we create for our customers.”
This acquisition follows soon after IFS’s acquisition of Poka, a provider of connected worker technology that empowers factory and field operatives to work smarter, safer and drive productivity. IFS expects the acquisition of Falkonry to complete in Q4 2023.
Listen to the entire Plant Services briefing with Falkonry's Nikunj Mehta via the latest episode of The Tool Belt Podcast, from Endeavor Business Media’s Manufacturing Group.
