Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to AINA Insights where prominent leaders and influencers shaping the industrial and industrial technology sector discuss topics that are critical for executives, boards and investors. INA Insights is brought to you by INA AI, a firm focused on working with industrial companies to make them unrivaled segment of ONE leaders. To learn more about INA AI, please visit our website at www.aina.AI.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Good morning and welcome to another episode of Titanium Economy podcast. Today we are joined by Nalin Jain, Group President, Digital Intelligence at Wabtech Corporation and a seasoned leader in industrial technology.
Nalan joined Wabtech in 2019, initially leading its global equipment business and now heads the digital intelligence division, overseeing a portfolio of software and mission critical control systems powering automation and productivity for railroads, mines and ports all over the world. He holds a mechanical degree, engineering degree from MIT Surat and an MBA from ISB Hyderabad.
Prior to vaptech, he led GE Transportation's international business and served as CEO for GE Aviation and GE Transportation in South Asia. Nathan, great to have you with us and let's dive in.
So let's get started with the big picture is at the forefront of digitizing industrials. Can you share your vision and give us a little bit of background of VABTech and then talk about the digital intelligence business and how it complements Wabtec's broader transformation.
[00:01:52] Speaker C: Hey Pradesh, thank you for having me on your podcast and really a pleasure talking to you and the A team here.
So look, I think just a quick introduction about Wabtech. We are 150 years old startup as we call ourselves.
This company has really been formed by a combination of three very innovative industry leaders. Thomas Alva Edison, George Westinghouse and of course Louis Fable. And Those are the three companies which came together in 2019, which is how Wabtech was really formed.
Now when I talk about what do we do in digital with respect to vaptech, we are a very heavily rail and mining focused company. Of course we do a lot of industrial businesses as well.
But within that, you know, for digital, if I have to just take a step back and describe to you in a few few minutes or a couple of minutes on what exactly are we trying to do here.
So think of trains or mining trucks. I mean when these things move on a track, they basically need to be smart about how they move about. So think about autonomous cars or cruise control on your cars. Those are the types of technologies we develop for trains which go on the locomotive. So that's one part of our business.
The other part of our business is okay, you Made the train smart. But how do you make the network smart in which these trains move, which is really where there are many, many trains moving on it. And that's kind of our network optimization back office software business.
And then the third element here really is that a lot of business which we do in the rail industry is basically having wayside technologies, signaling, communications and those types of technologies. We do a lot of that.
And finally, last but not the least, you know, there are a lot of safety technologies optimization solutions we do. So as you can see, what we are trying to do is really to make rails, trains and mining equipment smart about how they operate in the environment they operate in. Now when I talk about vision, mission for our business, it's really nothing about, nothing too fancy. But I mean we are trying to revolutionize, as we say, the way the world moves and that too for future generations. Which means that we keep sustainability in the back of our mind when we do things.
And we of course try and unlock our customers potential.
And what I mean by that is we are in a B2B business.
So if we can make our customers make more money, be more successful, that means that we will help them unlock their potential to deliver innovative services, solutions for lasting transportation needs.
So that's really a business we are in. And I'm really excited to be talking to you.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Awesome. Now that's a great intro. So as you look at the mining and the rail industry, where do you see the critical pain points that your solution is addressing today?
[00:04:48] Speaker C: So you know, great question and it's pretty straightforward based on what I described to you a few minutes back here. You know, there are four key elements which our customers are trying to solve for on a day to day basis.
Number one huge is safety. Right? These are heavy haul operations. I mean some of These trains are 2, 3 miles long trains and you know, they are carrying a lot of heavy stuff on them and same way on the mine sides. It's a very, very difficult environment and terrain.
And to that extent, safety of people, safety of operations, safety of the communities in which they operate in is very, very critical. And our technologies enable that safety. The other piece of course is which is what digital is good at doing in any part of our lives is efficiency, optimization and productivity.
And so we are always trying to, as I mentioned to you earlier, we are trying to help our customers unlock their potential. What that really means is sometimes by streamlining a process, streamlining a way of doing things, you can actually create more capacity, you can create more throughput. And that's what we are trying to enable. So that's the second problem statement I would say our customers are solving for.
And then in the last decade or so, our growing trend, which we are all very familiar with, which is where it feeds into our vision of future generations, sustainability has become a very, very critical factor.
And you know, a lot of parts of the world, even today run on diesel locomotives as an example, or run on diesel vehicles.
And to that extent, some of our digital technologies are helping optimize how much fuel you burn, how much waste you create, and so on, so forth. So to me, the three big problem we are trying to solve is very safety, efficiency and sustainability.
And if I had to add one last one, which is a critical need as technology evolves and grows better, how do you create more visibility of whatever is going on at a mine site or on a train operation, which is where telematics and some of those technologies come into play.
But look, I mean the reality is this is an exciting space where we see a ton of momentum right now is really when I talk about newer technologies being introduced in our space, whether it's use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, which has been around for a while and of course three things which have fundamentally changed the world in the last 10 to 15 years in my mind.
1 are communication networks. Because of the strength of the Internet today, the level of communication compatibility we have across the world is huge.
Second, our ability to process a lot of data, which is huge and now combine that with the capability which artificial intelligence brings. I mean this is just putting everything in steroids and that's what I think we are most excited about. And that's where the momentum is.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: And you mentioned AI and AI is kind of front and center in every conversation today. Can you give us some examples of where rabtech is deploying these and your cusp applications?
[00:08:02] Speaker C: So sure.
The way I would start there, Ritesh, is that machine learning has been around for a while in the business.
A lot of our technologies today, a lot of our solutions, whether it's a trip optimizer, whether it's the movement planner, these technologies have used physics based algorithms for many, many years.
And that's how these solutions came about.
As time has progressed, I would say in the last decade or seven, eight years, we've started using more and more machine learning tools, especially on the vision side. So there is a lot of vision technologies we are using today where cameras capture images, do identification of defects, do identification of problems. We have an interesting technology in our kinetics portfolio where you pick up the sound signature of the bearing noise and determine which bearing is potentially going to fail. So that's a predictive capability we have today. So there are a lot of technologies which we already have had which are more in the machine learning, predictive maintenance, condition monitoring, those kind of spaces. I think with artificial intelligence, which I think really became big news In November of 23 when Chat GPT launched first LLM gained a lot of momentum, but at the same time we are still in the early days in some sense. And to that extent the goal we have when we think about artificial intelligence today is how do we empower our customers and our teams to accomplish more than what they have accomplished in the past. So we are still thinking about this as more of a human augmentation tool than a human replacement tool.
And to that extent what we are trying to do is to focus on three or four areas which we feel are going to have the maximum impact.
And a lot of that actually you will see is more internal than external. But of course we are still solving for delivering better solutions, better quality to our customers. So the three buckets I would highlight to you is first is simple. I mean it's internal efficiencies, looking at our work processes, looking at our workflows and see how we re engineer those workflows and use more and more artificial intelligence in those processes which are repetitive, which are being done day in, day out on everyday basis.
I think the second bucket which I really think about is when it comes to our products and our services, as you know we are a very, very heavily software development kind of a business.
And to that extent, how do we use artificial intelligence as a copilot, as a, you know, assistant to our employees, our software developers to help them deliver better quality software in shorter time in a smarter fashion. So a lot of focus on software development in itself as a process and how do you use more of AI tools like GitHub? Copilot is something which we have deployed with all our programmers across the business and use that to make them more efficient, deliver better quality, of course in some cases reduce tech debt, in other cases use it for testing purposes as well as. So that's the second space I would call out the third one which is I think super exciting and I do believe this is a real near term opportunity for a business like us. We do deliver a lot of services to our customers today.
And you know, when it comes to L1 level support, we are injecting more and more chatbots into it. We are looking at that as a strategy. We are of course, you know, using more of our L1 help desk to deliver L2 level support by using cataloging and library creating libraries of all our knowledge base inside the system. So those are some area where again we see a ton of opportunity. But as you can see, everything I've named till now is not about a product or a technology. It's about delivering better outcomes to our customers and to our teams and to our organizations. And the last one which is the most exciting but also the most challenging is how do you embed more artificial intelligence into your products?
And this is the one where we are experimenting with a lot of things. We are layering in AI in certain instances or building certain features and certain modules on top of our software where it was a physics based algorithm, now it's becoming more of an AI driven algorithm.
So those are some experiments which are I think some at some different stages of development.
But it is still premature for us to say that we've got products which are AI enabled which are out there in the market. We are on that journey right now.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: That's super helpful. I'll pull that thread further and get your reaction on.
Some of your customers would also be looking at minimizing their carbon footprint. Where do you see digital AI or new tech helping them on that journey?
[00:13:02] Speaker C: So, but this is huge for us. If you heard me talk about this, right? I mean in my earlier comments there whether I, when I mentioned, you know, our vision being to revolutionize for the future generations and when I said one of the four problems we are trying to solve is sustainability.
So look, I have a lot of pride in saying this to you that some of our technologies have actually enabled anywhere from 20 to 25% reduction in emissions, which is what a lot of our trains like. In North America everything runs on diesel locomotives right now.
So we have technologies today like something called a trip optimizer is a product we have. It exactly works like your car cruise control. The only difference is car cruise control is used for managing speed of the train car. In this case it is used for optimizing the amount of fuel it burns. So it is an EPA certified product.
And you know, EPA has certified Trip Optimizer for saving at least 10 to 12% fuel. And last year, you know, we crossed a billion operational miles of service with this product which has saved close to 752 million gallons of fuel, which is around 7.7 million tons of greenhouse emissions for, for the, for the planet. And this is just one example. Similarly, we've got products like Locotrol we bought another product called Movement Planner. We've added new things like zero to zero and so on. So, so there are a bunch of these technologies which are all digital.
You don't need to go buy, you know, if you have a locomotive, which is an old generation locomotive, you don't need to go buy a next generation locomotive to reduce those emissions. You can inject these technologies into your locomotive because they are retrofitted on older locomotives as well to achieve those carbon reductions which you just talked about.
So really feel proud about what our team has been able to do and innovate around these technologies to deliver a much more sustainable world.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: That's super insightful.
So taking all this together, customer feedback, the regulatory pressure, the data you're collecting, the changes happening, the digital field with AI and ML, how do all these things influence or impact your digital product roadmap?
[00:15:22] Speaker C: So look, I think it's, it's, it's a journey, as I mentioned earlier, and it's fast evolving. I think the challenge we have in our space right now is we sit in the intersection of, you know, an industrial world, which is, in a relative sense, it's slower to move. Right.
But at the same time, the technology space is moving at a very, very rapid pace.
There is a little bit of an inherent conflict, if you see what I'm saying here, on how industrial businesses want to move versus how the technology space tends to move.
Our challenge always is how do we make sure that we keep these two things in sync because we sit in the middle of that. We cater to industrial customers, we are part of an industrial ecosystem, but we are really playing with technology where things are evolving and rapidly changing.
And so really what we try and do is two, three things. One, stay focused on the customer all the time. Really, how do you continue to identify use cases which create value for your customers?
Right. Have the right type of a dialogue. But that's the only thing which is going to drive fast adoption of those technologies as you develop them.
The other thing which we also think about these days a lot is, and I say this to my teams a lot, technology is not a barrier today as far as our business is concerned. We are in the business of identifying a problem which our customers want to solve for and then going back to the drawing board and figuring out what software, what technology can be developed to solve that problem and then again beta testing it and applying it into actually the customer location and delivering the results.
So to my mind, the biggest evolution for our business is how do you continue to learn, evolve and deliver new solutions and new technologies to our customers as the world continues to change.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Thank you for that, Nathan.
[00:17:25] Speaker C: So I would like to shift the.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Focus away from Wabtech and onto you and your personal journey. You've had a rich career across ge, aerospace and transportation.
Can you walk us through that journey and key lessons you learned from that experience early on that's shaping your leadership today?
[00:17:50] Speaker C: Yeah, so thank you for that question. And yeah, I mean, a lot of, lot of pride in what, what, what I have been able to do with these different companies.
And of course, my first love, as you said, there was aerospace. Right.
And then of course, I transitioned to G Transportation at some point of time and then of course ended up with vaptech once G was merged with vaptech. So it's been a great journey. I think the three things I would highlight, just from my career standpoint, without getting into all the details, which you already shared in the beginning, in terms of my bio, is really what has really changed the way I think about business, industry, or anything else is three things. One, you know, all the international experience I've had of working in different parts of the world and different geographies and how what may apply in Japan does not apply in Africa and vice versa. So. Right, right. That's one. One critical thing which is very, very important to remember. The other thing, which is interesting, which has really helped shape my, you know, career and my path here is really around technology. Right. So in very early days of my career, when I had the opportunity to start building my thinking and how we approach things, you know, the concept of value creation in everything you do was very, very critical. And that's how, you know, I've grown. And that's why I get excited about technology.
I get excited about this confluence and intersection which is happening right now for industrial and the digital landscape.
And that gets me really motivated and excited about what lies ahead of us in the future.
But personally, just from a leadership standpoint, I think there are three things I would emphasize and highlight, which has been my mantra, if I may call it, on how I've lived my career and my personal life. Number one is curiosity and passion. So you cannot do anything which you want to get done if you don't have those two things in your head, which is never stop learning, never stop reinventing and renewing yourself. If you're not getting better today versus yesterday, then you're getting worse, is the way I think about some of these things.
So the second thing is, whatever you do, keep customer at the center of it, because they are paying your bill, they are paying your pay slip and they are paying your salary. And to that extent, everything should be customer driven, customer focused.
And last but not the least, you can't achieve anything if you don't surround yourself with smart people who can help you understand a problem and solve the challenges of the future. And this last one, I have learned this more than ever in my current role because I am not a digital guy by background, as you can see from my profile.
But to learn digital and to figure out how this world wants to operate or likes to operate has been a huge learning curve for me and a steep one as well. So that's how I would sum it up. Ritesh.
Got it.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: And it's interesting you brought digital in and that now that you're leading this fully digital portfolio, having made that transition, what are the biggest differences do you experience between managing a traditional engineering product slash portfolio versus digital solutions?
[00:21:21] Speaker C: That's a very interesting one. So I think as I mentioned earlier, you know, the biggest difference I would say, is when you are in the physical world, if I may just call it the physical world, and you're building an aircraft engine or you're building a locomotive, it's a, it's a defined, tangible product which serves a purpose, right? I mean, an aircraft engine makes an aircraft fly and locomotive pulls a train, a long train, off of freight cars or passenger cars, right? And then what you do is really, you are injecting new technology into it to make it more fuel efficient or make it more, you know, capable to take longer distances and so on, so forth. Unlike that in digital, as I described to you earlier, you, you may say that you're building a product and eventually you will, but you are starting with a customer problem, right? You are saying, what's that use case which you're trying to solve for?
And from that use case, you're working backwards to figure out a technology solution which is going to solve that problem.
And as I said earlier, I mean, it's less of a technology challenge today than it is a customer use case adoption challenge and understanding that problem statement challenge which we really deep in. So to me, that's the biggest and the most fundamental difference. If I would highlight to you in the tangible aircraft engine or a locomotive world versus a digital world.
Beyond that, I think big ones are talent, right?
The nature of talent management, the kind of people you need in this space, their mindset, how they approach it. We all live Covid and you know, what happened in the tech space when Covid was on in Terms of how the great talent attrition happened and how the big magnificent seven were hiring and everything else. So. So the creativity and the value creation in this space, I would not say that is not true. I think that is true for aircraft engine and locomotive as well. But the huge dependence on people and their potential in this space means that how you manage your teams, how you have your work environment hybrid or work from home or work from office, and all of those things matter. Right? So that's the other element which I would highlight. And then the last one is digital creates an opportunity for you to do more experimentation.
You can do more of those MVP kind of approaches. Think of, I can't imagine in my life building an aircraft engine as an MVP. Right. You have to get it 100% right the first time you get it. Unlike that, in digital technologies, there is some room for experimentation. So the whole concept of fail fast, you know, learn fast, develop, do MVP experiment, take feedback, go back and do it again, do beta testing, and all of that is very, very different than how an industrial world works. So I would highlight those three are big ones from my standpoint.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: Thanks, Nalan. That kind of paints a contrasting picture between the physical industries and the digital industries and industrial sectors. Industries are typically seen as slow in adopting technology, slow to adopt digital tools over the years. Based on your experience, do you see that as still holding true? Are the perceptions changing and at what point would you expect to see a tipping point? As you said, technology is no longer going to be the friction point and driving those transformations.
[00:25:04] Speaker C: Yeah, look, it's hard to predict. I definitely believe there is acceleration which is happening.
I do believe, you know, there is enough technology which is embedded today in all our industrial businesses. Industrial companies. So it's not the same as it was 20, 30 years back, you know, on the artificial intelligence side, because you have to think of it like this, that most of the dollars being deployed right now are being deployed more on consumer use cases. Right. Whether it's the chat GPTs of the world and the Geminis of the world and all of those companies, which is where capital is going. So obviously there is more acceleration on the consumer side of the house.
But at the same time, I do believe industrial is going to catch up. And I think the challenge is going to continue to be what are the use cases and how do we generate value out of the use cases? That's the question we'll have to answer time and again when we do this.
And I think acceleration is a given.
It's all a function of can we set up the right ecosystem? Because just in my world, Pritesh, because the technologies and the industrial spaces I've dealt with are safety critical. I mean aerospace same is true for trains.
Safety is a very, very critical element of everything we do because there's no room for error in that sense. So for us, we have to account for that reality that the cycle times for some of the technology developments for us are going to be longer because we are playing with safety critical technology which can impact the lives of many, many communities and people.
But I do believe it's coming.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: So with that framing in place, where do you see digital providing the most value or most immediate value in industrials?
[00:27:00] Speaker C: So you know, some of the examples I used when I shared with you are vision on artificial intelligence, right. I do believe anything which is repetitive, which is, you know, a repeat job being done 50 times a day or 500 times a day is an opportunity for every organization, every business today to use digital technology, artificial intelligence in those cases, and that goes to services. As an example I talked about earlier, customer service is an area which is interesting. Business processes is another interesting one in that same space. Right. And of course, if you are a software development shop, then software development itself is a big opportunity. But you know, if I step away from AI, which I already covered in the previous discussion, you know, when it comes to some of the other digital technologies, I think as I mentioned earlier, with the kind of the communication infrastructure we have today, the capabilities we have built around sensors, the capabilities we have around processing, there's a ton of opportunity in the industrial space on inspection technologies as an example. And this could be remote monitoring of equipment, this could be remote running of equipment.
And those are real opportunities which I see emerging and continue to grow because remember, we are all feeling the pressure of shortage of skilled manpowers, shortage of labor.
We all have some level of aging infrastructure in some parts of the world or equipment. And at the same time we have growing regulations, growing requirements to measure, monitor, control and inspection technologies, condition monitoring.
All of those types of areas are great opportunities when it comes to digitization.
And the last one I would highlight beyond AI inspection technologies, really around automation. And automation could be automation of trains, automation of networks, automation of these inspections I just talked about, those are all great opportunities.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: That's good insights. So in closing, based on your experience, the journey from physical to digital, what message would you share with industrial leaders who know or who are facing the challenge of accelerating their digital transformation and are working through the challenges?
[00:29:24] Speaker C: I think my biggest thought would be and this is my own personal learning and experience here is open up your apertures, right? You know, go beyond the industry or the space you operate in and you will see how the world is changing around you.
And we need to get on that bus of change.
And change management is our biggest challenge today, whether it comes to ourselves as leaders or our teams. And if we can drive that change management and that headset shift, then things will happen. Because technology is there. It's just for us to adopt it.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: Thank you, Nalan, for your insightful stories, practical lessons, and a clear vision of the future.
It's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you.
[00:30:12] Speaker C: Thank you so much.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to INA Insights. Please visit INA AI for more podcasts, publications and events on developments shaping the industrial and industrial technology sector.
[00:30:33] Speaker D: SA.
