- Job: Vice President Sales & Marketing, Compressor Technique
- Specialist Subject: Remote monitoring and connectivity
Having joined Atlas Copco Group as a project leader and manufacturing engineer in Antwerp in 2000, Bjorn is now Vice President Sales & Marketing in our Compressor Technique business area. In this role, Bjorn is at the forefront of efforts to communicate the benefits of our increasingly sophisticated data gathering and analysis technology that we call SMARTLINK.
Bringing asset management to customers’ fingertips
So what makes SMARTLINK great? This compressor monitoring technology gathers, compares and analyzes data on the fly, allowing customers to intelligently assess the performance of their compressed air systems from moment to moment, ensuring factories endure as little downtime as possible.
“The platform brings asset management to our customers’ fingertips. They can monitor their machines and ensure their assets are running in the most efficient way and with the highest uptime,” Bjorn says.
The key to top performance
Let us look at how this all works. Our compressed air equipment is continually gathering data and delivers it to experts in Atlas Copco’s Global Diagnostics Center (GDC). Then the data is analyzed with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and smart algorithms built using decades of compressed air technology knowhow.
Experts in the GDC monitor the machines remotely and create tickets, often triggered by what the team calls “smart events”. Incoming data on local weather, for example, can trigger a smart event. Data from the machines can be combined with external information, which prompts the AI models to suggest changes to the way machinery is operating.
“We compare something as simple as the ambient temperature outside and inside the compressor room and the temperature at the outlet of the compressed air, so we’ll know when the outlet temperature of the machine is too high relative to the inlet,” Bjorn says.
Bringing value – beyond visualization and monitoring
Insights from SMARTLINK leads to tailored recommendations based on data.
“We can connect the dots and suggest a fix. The process is not just about data collection and monitoring, it’s what we do with the data and the insights that we generate, and that’s really where AI comes into its own,” Bjorn says.
At times, the GDC team will receive tickets that are not logical. Those tickets are then given back to engineers so our systems can be refined, enabling a process of continuous improvement.
"All information and recommendations are corroborated by our experts to ensure accuracy. Indeed, the combination of human expertise and AI brings the best out of the system," Bjorn says.
