>> I'm thrilled to be joined by Michel Morvan,
Co-founder and Chief Executive of Cosmo Tech,
and Jerome Fournier, Corporate Vice President
of Innovation Services and Growth at Nexans.
We're here to talk about how partners and
customers use Azure digital twins,
AI and connected ecosystems to
solve business challenges. Welcome, gentlemen.
>> Thanks, Sam. Really delighted to be here.
>> Thank you, Sam. Thank you for having us.
>> If you could both briefly describe what your companies do.
Michel, we'll start with you.
>> Well. Cosmo Tech is a software vendor and we
specialize in complex modeling and simulation.
What we provide are what is called simulation digital twins.
We create the actual 360 degrees replicas of
complex industrial ecosystems like
supply chains or energy networks.
They use hybrid AI
technology to dramatically improve decision-making and efficiency.
>> Great. Thank you. Jerome.
>> Nexans is a global player in the energy transition.
Our company has a turnover of
six billion euro and 26,000 employees.
We provide cables, some cabling system to make electricity safer,
renewable, decarbonize, and accessible to everyone.
>> Great. You work together
now to develop a solution for energy companies.
Tell us a little more about that.
>> Vast majority of networks in operation today are
between 40 and 50 years old and
require extensive maintenance and replacement in investments.
Electrical networks are on a tough spot.
To make it concrete,
according to the International Energy Agency,
an estimated of 1.1 trillion is required to replace, extend,
and upgrade the US electrical grid through 2040.
We joined forces with Cosmo Tech to
commercialize an offering called assets electrical.
It is a simulation digital twin solution
built on the Azure digital twin.
Nexans customer are electrical distribution
and transmission utilities who
need to optimize the network
better manage maintenance and investments.
Two example; Group E,
one sits on the largest grid,
choose our solution to improve
their investment decision while improving the performance metrics.
Basically no blackouts or power outage.
They integrated 300,000
assets in the simulation digital twin,
and this decision support tool,
allow them to minus 10 percent capex or opex avoidance.
The return of investment was in the range of
3-4 times the cost of developing and implementing this solution.
A second example is
the first simulation digital twin for electrical application.
It has been developed by Cosmo Tech, for RTE,
a French major electrical utility in charge
of 100,000 kilometer of high voltage line.
Their annual maintenance budget is 800 million euro.
In one side, they integrated
one million asset components in the digital twin and
they run 30 million operation, thanks to the tool,
and their ability to simulate the future,
allow them an increase of
15 percent of budget allocation by the regulator,
who is the administrative authority in charge of
regulating the electricity and gas markets.
>> That's fantastic. By leveraging
the simulation digital twins you are able
to save tens of millions of euros,
let's unpack that a little bit more.
Michel, let's go through how exactly that work.
>> Well. I agree with you.
It's quite impressive that
the results that can be obtained with this,
and when I say this,
it's the simulation digital twins. What are they?
They are digital replicas,
they set up a system or an ecosystem.
They are connected to
the main system by real-time industrial IoT,
that gives the current state of the system,
for example, here it can be the electric grid.
It allows, of course, knowing data from
the presence about the grid here or the system in general,
but also from the past.
More than that, it integrates all crucial rules, constraints,
interactions between each component of
the system to define its dynamics,
or it evolves in time.
For example, what happens when
an electrical asset phase and hold it.
The people work on it to
repair and the impact on the rest of the grid.
This is called, this way of representing things,
a knowledge-based AI,
because it comes from human expertise.
Because of that, we have the possibility with these twins to
simulate them all the time
and provide in a way data from the future.
This is hybrid approach because we
use AI based on the data and also AI based on the knowledge,
and we provide a holistic and dynamic view
of the ecosystem over time.
This is what we can obtain
360-degree predictive and prescriptive simulation.
The idea is to use the simulation to prescribe
the best possible action plan to reach a given goal.
We use the word,
360 degree, because we look at the system as a whole.
It allows us to explore new ways to
achieve multiple objectives across many areas,
it can be cost reduction,
resiliency, efficiency, or anything else.
Of course, because we
incorporate knowledge-based AI and simulation,
decision-makers can evaluate a whole range
of possible future and then
achieve solutions that are not just
based on data from the past as you have seen,
to create a lot of value.
The simulation digital twin platform,
the Cosmo Tech simulation,
is natively integrated with Azure digital twin.
Azure serves as the enterprise scale platform,
and Azure IoT Services brings in
data in real-time from operation systems.
The platform is then sold as a Platform-as-a-service offering,
and of course, there are different accelerators such as asset,
which is the one that has been discussed by Jerome,
and also supply chain,
providing in the design solution for
quickly implementing advanced simulation.
Simulation digital twins are then deployed directly into
Azure tenants of the consumer
or partner like Nexans in this case,
and potentially one of their customers.
It's one platform and multiple solutions
>> That's great. This asset electrical product,
it provides a way to simplify
and save money by improving efficiency.
Then, Jerome, somewhere along the line,
you started to realize this could be
used to help with your sustainability goals.
Could you tell us more about that?
>> Sure. It started in 2020.
Our CEO announced our goal to
contribute to carbon neutrality in 2030.
Our roadmap plans to reduce the carbon footprint of
our business by 4.2 percent each year.
To tell the truth, the first initiatives
are quite simple to define and implement,
but then the choices become complex and the impacts are smallest.
We decided to develop and to use
a decision support tool based on digital twin technology,
through this partnership with Microsoft and Cosmo Tech.
>> Then, so how far have you
gotten and how has it impacted your carbon neutral goal so far?
>> We built this simulation digital twin using a data
from 34 Nexans sites worldwide,
and scenarios were running based on the huge amount of data.
Basically, 60,000 characteristics
have been integrated in the digital twin.
To give you an example,
120,000 supply and delivery routes
have been simulated to find out the lowest carbon signature.
Based on that, we develop
a plan that will reduce carbon emission, as I said,
4.2 percent per year,
which represents 50,000 tonnes on CO_2 emission,
to achieve this 2030 goal.
>> So compelling. I mean,
achieving sustainability goals has got to be
the most critical thing for companies to achieve in our lifetime.
Here's a goal that's helping you to enable it.
How has this affected your company's profitability?
>> Financial profitability on
carbon emission reduction can appear contradictory.
We want to perform on both,
and this is nearly impossible without technology.
Simulation digital twin allow us to find
the new compromises to gain on both sides.
Profitability and CO_2 emissions.
>> That's really awesome. For Cosmo Tech,
Michel, where do you see this technology really going?
>> Well. In a way,
I think it's going to be huge with this technology,
and of course, with the partnership Cosmo Tech has with Microsoft.
We build an agile,
versatile platform that can model
any system no matter how complex.
The platform supports Cosmo Tech language customer,
and that is related with digital twin description language of
Microsoft and
most other advanced analytics
simulation and optimization techniques,
which allows, for example,
to paying at the same time,
as Jerome said, profitability and CO_2 emission reduction.
It can be customized to a particular use case and
by science as well to suit their own needs.
The Cosmo Tech technology is in
use across many different industries,
the automotive sector, aerospace,
energy utilities, public transit,
ore refineries, and with applications for everything from
a single production line to
an entire supply chain or
a decades long asset investment strategy.
Today we are working with many different partners who,
like Nexans of course,
are developing new products and revenue stream using
simulation digital twins while optimizing their own operation.
This is from my perspective,
where technology is taking all of us,
and I really think it's going to be big.
>> That's great. It's so amazing to see what
happens when you can combine the physical and the digital,
find insights from those.
The vision that we've jointly defined over the last couple
of years and seeing that come to
reality now is really just amazing.
Thank you both so much for taking
the time to share your stories with
all of us today. Thank you, gentlemen.
>> Thank you.