Key Takeaways From SLB Forum 2024

In late September 2024, over 1400 participants gathered in Monaco for the SLB Digital Forum to discuss key technology developments for the energy industry. With a special focus on new developments in AI, data, the industrial internet of things (IIoT), edge, and cloud computing, leaders left with a better understanding of how these technologies are transforming today’s energy systems and enabling the transition to those of tomorrow.

The highlight of the conference was the introduction of Lumi, SLB’s new data and AI platform, built to help scale digital capabilities for their customers across the energy industry. In this platform, Cognite Data Fusion plays a central role in helping connect and analyze complex production data and provide mechanics for scaling AI across assets, sites, and enterprises.

This launch could not come at a more important time as the energy industry is quickly modernizing operations with digital technologies intended to improve safety and sustainability. Throughout the conference, the Cognite team kept hearing these three things over and over.

1. The time for data-driven problem solving must come down from months to days and weeks

Today’s energy challenges must be resolved faster if the industry expects to meet its goals around safety and sustainability. Executives agree that it is no longer acceptable for decisions to take months due to complex data gathering and challenges with telling strong data-driven narratives.

But how can teams move faster if it still takes too long to get the data and insights they need and build momentum? The industry is swimming in untapped data that often requires significant manpower and expertise to successfully apply it to operational problems. With smarter practices built in for data discovery and analysis, operators are finding that they can get to insights with 50-80% less effort and time.

2. AI technology is key for operator success and is already ubiquitous

While AI is already in use in fast-innovating companies for predicting asset failure modes, for extracting information from diagrams, and for co-pilots and intelligent assistants, it is not yet widespread or deployed at scale across the energy industry. The next leap is for broad adoption of AI systems and for it to shift from being a novelty, to repeatable tools, models, and practices.

In tomorrow’s industrial reality, most daily tasks will contain an element of AI – from machine learning-based prediction models to LLMs with reasoning – in a way that improves worker productivity like never before. To get here, operators and digital teams need to be able to effectively use the right AI method and model for the business problem, in an environment where they can trust their data and scale their use case.

3. Viewing and analyzing data across data sources is still a problem

It’s more obvious now than ever before that the AI reality won’t exist for operators who don’t solve their fundamental data problem. This is not a new challenge, but an incredibly difficult one to get past, given varying degrees of digital maturity, internal politics, unclear objectives, and quickly-emerging tech solutions.

Solving this requires 1) deep domain understanding of complex, nuanced, industrial data, 2) a better approach to using AI for simplifying and automating routine data tasks like data onboarding and contextualization, and 3) a robust environment to create and scale use cases with less effort.

Cognite is at the center of SLB’s LUMI operating system

It’s fitting that SLB’s marquee launch at the forum addressed these key points and more, with the Lumi data & AI platform positioned to integrate advanced artificial intelligence capabilities - including generative AI - with workflows across the energy value chain.

“AI is fundamentally altering the dynamics of our industry, but its transformational potential is hindered by the complexity of our industry’s data ecosystems,” said Rakesh Jaggi, president, Digital and Integration, SLB. “Through the Lumi data and AI platform, we will liberate and contextualize data for our global customers across domains – enabling them to scale advanced AI workflows and accelerate their ongoing digital transformation.”

Smarter workflows and operational change will move faster with the simple access to complex industrial data that the Lumi platform offers. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of “when,” with early innovators already delivering value from smarter data management software and practices. With data and AI at the top of minds of energy executives, it’s no wonder our booth was full of meaningful conversations the entire conference!

So what can you do next on your journey?

1. Learn more about Cognite and SLB’s important relationship
2. Get up to speed on the latest industrial data requirements for AI
3. Discover more about industrial agents and learn everything you need to know