IFS Acquires Falkonry To Capitalize On Manufacturing Demands For Greater Automation And Sustainability

IFS Acquires Falkonry To Capitalize On Manufacturing Demands For Greater Automation And Sustainability

Since July 2022, IFS has completed three high profile acquisitions. The first and largest was the absorption of Europe-focused EAM and CMMS solution provider Ultimo Software Solutions, which bolstered IFS’s existing EAM capabilities. The second was the June 2023 purchase of connected worker platform provider Poka, which targets North American and European manufacturers. The third and most recent was of Falkonry on 31^st August 2023.

Falkonry is an industrial AI analytics provider. Where the acquisition of Ultimo boosted IFS’s predictive maintenance capabilities, with Falkonry it goes further still. Falkonry’s anomaly detection and pattern recognition solutions facilitate asset and production monitoring, which in turn can be leveraged for predictive maintenance and production optimization. Success stories include $300,000 in savings per incident in downtime reduction at an offshore oil and gas facility and a 96% reduction in the number of welds sent for visual inspection at an automotive manufacturing plant.

It doesn’t hurt that Falkonry’s solution emphasizes prevailing marketing terminology in the industrial asset management solution space, tapping into the dominance of ‘AI-based’, ‘AI-assisted’ and similar language.

There is also a general trend at industrial facilities of reducing staff numbers as much as possible, especially given the shortage of skilled workers in the industrial world. Frequently, digital solutions are seen as a path to maintaining operations while reducing headcount. According to our upcoming 2023 global corporate survey, 67% of the 304 survey respondents noted that low availability of skilled workers was driving the digital transformation of plant operations.

However, the clearest motivator of the acquisition is opportunity. 44% of operational excellence decision-makers stated that they use an in-house developed solution for asset failure prediction, and 32% use an in-house solution for production or yield optimization and management. As such, there are still large swathes of industrial facilities that do not leverage a commercial solution for Falkonry’s two major use cases.

The Falkonry acquisition, alongside the Ultimo and Poka deals, will allow IFS to help manufacturing firms achieve sustainable plant operations with its comprehensive suite of solutions for enhanced asset performance and production efficiency.

For more information on industrial AI analytics, read our report Market Overview: Industrial AI Analytics Solutions and sign up to our upcoming webinar Generative AI For Industry: Operational Excellence In The Age Of Language Models. For more information on production optimization software, read Market Overview: Production Optimization Software.