In industrial organizations across North America and Europe, the majority of IT and Operations decision-makers agree — Industrial AI is key. It has played a pivotal role in their organizations’ digital transformation and promises to drive new business value in areas of cost, productivity and efficiency, while also providing a competitive advantage. The benefits of Industrial AI, and the need to create a strategy around unleashing and maximizing its full potential are almost universally clear and embraced. Industrial organizations don’t need to be sold on the value of Industrial AI; the challenge is in realizing it.

 

Industrial organizations don’t need to be sold on the value of Industrial AI; the challenge is in realizing it.

 

To better understand these challenges, Aspen Technology, Inc. commissioned an independent survey of 200 North American and European IT and Operations decision-makers from across the industrial sector, including companies in construction and engineering, chemicals, energy, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, and metals and mining. The findings provided key insights into the current state of Industrial AI adoption, as well as the core challenges that are inhibiting organizations from realizing the full value of Industrial AI, namely industrial data quality and management, internal silos and a lack of collaboration among relevant teams, as well as the lack of a clear strategy around Industrial AI.

Most organizations don’t need to be sold on the value of Industrial AI; they already know it
The survey showed that more than 8 in 10 say Industrial AI has played a significant or major role in their organization’s broader digital transformation strategy in the last three years. 

 

 

Most organizations either have a live or pilot Industrial AI project
Among the survey’s respondents, 79% say they either have an Industrial AI project live right now or are piloting one. But that doesn’t mean the other 20% are deliberately staying away from Industrial AI. Just 1% of respondents say they have either no initiatives for Industrial AI in place, or no plans to develop one.

 

 

The top roadblocks impeding data quality and management
Industrial AI depends on ingesting quality data. But industrial data is often left undiscovered due to a number of structural challenges. Nearly all (98%) of the IT and Operations decision makers polled for this survey say their organization was experiencing at least one of these industrial data challenges, inhibiting their data quality and management practices.

 

 

One-third of industrial data is not visible
This lack of collaboration also reflects the broader challenge of visibility — or lack thereof. While just 25% of respondents name visibility as a challenge, on average the decision-makers surveyed estimate they only had visibility over about 66% of their organization’s industrial data. That means industrial organizations, on average, have little to no visibility over one-third of the industrial data they’ve collected.

 

 

Most organizations recognize the importance of an Industrial AI strategy, but few actually have one
Nearly all respondents recognize the importance of Industrial AI to their organizations—99% could name at least one business driver for adopting an Industrial AI strategy.

 

 

The plant of the future. Are we there yet?
Industrial organizations need to accelerate digital transformation to stay relevant, competitive, and capable of addressing market disruptors. The Self-Optimizing Plant represents the ultimate vision of that journey. And the Aspen AIoT Hub™ is helping industrial organizations realize this vision.

By combining Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the Aspen AIoT Hub is a fit-for-purpose, cloud-ready Industrial AI infrastructure solution that helps to unlock the immense value from industrial data assets across the enterprise and deliver actionable outcomes faster than ever before.The AIoT Hub provides the integrated data management, edge and cloud infrastructure and production-grade AI environment to build, deploy and host Industrial AI applications at enterprise speed and scale. It also serves as the foundational infrastructure to realize the transformative vision of the Self-Optimizing Plant.

 

Want to learn more?
To learn more about the research results, read the “State of Industrial AI 2021” research report or watch the “What the Latest Industrial AI Research Reveals About the Plant of the Future” on-demand webinar.