Over the Air · 31 May 2023 · 38m
Vijay Sankaran, Chief Technology Officer at Johnson Controls, discusses the company's transformation from an industrial equipment manufacturer to a digital industrial company focused on smart, healthy, and sustainable buildings. He details the integration of secure intelligent edge hardware, digital twins, and AI to decarbonize buildings, citing acquisitions of Foghorn and Tempero Networks. Sankaran explains how Johnson Controls uses AI for predictive maintenance and space optimization, aiming to make smart building technology accessible to schools and small hospitals, not just large corporations.
Where this conversation describes AI being used to build or deliver a product. Part of the AI in practice tracker.
Customer supportAI search / ChatGPT
Technicians use an advanced AI search tool, potentially leveraging a secure form of ChatGPT, to find instructions on how to service buildings.
“hey, I'm a technician and, you know, I want to use, um, you know, an advanced AI search, maybe leveraging a secure form of, you know, chat GPT or something like that to find out how to service the building.”
Speaker 1 · Hear it at 11:48
large enterprises
Other shows on the same ground, closest first.
Stefan Schwab, CEO of Enlighted (a Siemens company), discusses how smart building technologies can optimize energy efficiency and workplace experience. He explains that integrating IoT data from sensors into lighting and HVAC systems allows building owners to reduce CO2 footprints and manage occupancy in real-time. Schwab highlights that smart lighting serves as a critical infrastructure for gathering granular location intelligence and enabling retrofitting in older buildings through energy savings. The conversation emphasizes using this data to encourage voluntary office return by facilitating collaboration and reducing the cognitive load for employees.
Neil Jain, Product Manager at Site 1001, explains how their platform Skylight aggregates 'place data' from building systems and crowdsourced user feedback to optimize smart buildings. He details the ROI drivers for facility managers, specifically predictive maintenance of expensive assets like HVAC and optimizing staffing levels based on occupancy. Jain discusses the shift toward decentralized, personalized experiences in commercial spaces like stadiums and casinos, leveraging AI assistant 'Carl' to interact with both staff and occupants.
Michael Moran, CMO and Chief Risk and Sustainability Officer at MicroShare, discusses how smart building technologies enable companies to meet ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) goals. He explains that MicroShare’s platform uses occupancy, air quality, and leak detection sensors to provide auditable data for sustainability reporting, moving beyond simple cost savings. Moran highlights the critical role of change management in facilities management, noting that resistance to new data-driven workflows requires education and user-friendly dashboards to ensure adoption.
Tanuj Mohan, CTO and Co-Founder of Enlighted (now a Siemens company), explains how their IoT platform future-proofs buildings by moving beyond simple energy efficiency to optimize human productivity and safety. He details the architecture of their learning building system, which uses ceiling-mounted sensors for location tracking and edge AI, and discusses specific use cases like hospital asset tracking and post-pandemic social distancing enforcement via Bluetooth beacons. Mohan emphasizes that security and privacy must be built into the physical infrastructure from the start, rather than bolted on, and argues that the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of smart building technologies as a critical tool for economic recovery and workplace safety.
Marty Sprinzen, Co-Founder and CEO of VANTIQ, discusses the architectural challenges of building real-time IoT applications, emphasizing the shift from batch processing to event-driven edge computing. He details use cases including SoftBank’s smart building in Tokyo for workplace safety and Daikin’s ‘air as a service’ model, highlighting the complexity of integrating legacy systems with modern edge infrastructure. Sprinzen explains that successful IoT deployment requires careful distribution of logic between edge and cloud to manage latency and data volume, noting that many enterprise projects fail due to poor architecture rather than technology limitations.
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