IFS Partners with Anthropic to accelerate and scale the impact of AI in critical industries

Today at IFS Industrial X Unleashed, IFS Nexus Black and Anthropic announced a partnership to accelerate and scale the impact of AI in the world’s most critical industries. IFS is launching Resolve as the first of many new IFS solutions that puts industry-specific AI directly into the hands of frontline workers to transform work and rapidly deliver value.

The partnership combines the deep industry expertise and AI talent of IFS Nexus Black, part of IFS – the global Industrial AI leader that’s spent decades alongside customers in the hangars, factories and plants that keep the world turning – with Anthropic’s world-leading AI capabilities and commitment to building safe, reliable AI.

“Partnering with Anthropic is about more than just their best-in-class AI models, it is also their commitment to responsible, safe AI – that’s non-negotiable when serving industries where, some days, life is on the line”, said Kriti Sharma, CEO at IFS Nexus Black. “These hardcore industries are where the real AI revolution is happening. It’s not the AI of tabloid headlines. It’s the lifeline for the workers that keep the lights on, the cupboards stocked, and the world turning.”

Resolve’s capabilities reflect the stark realities facing technicians and field workers across aerospace & defense, construction & engineering, manufacturing, energy, utilities & natural resources and telecoms. Leveraging Claude, Resolve enables customers to:

• Predict and prevent faults faster by interpreting multi-modal data such as video, audio, temperature & pressure, and complex schematics.
• Connect the right technician to the right part, in the right place with optimized scheduling.
• Prevent future faults, reduce paperwork and collect valuable data with voice recognition and automatic transcription.

These industries are straining under the pressure of ageing infrastructure, lost expertise, and an increasingly unpredictable world that throws supply chains out of balance – all while facing a once in a generation increase in demands from re-industrialization and AI infrastructure build out. They are underserved by generic and consumer-grade AI geared towards white collar workers and unsuited to asset and service-centric operations.  Scalable, high-impact AI solutions designed for industrial applications are urgently needed.

“Anthropic combines frontier AI capabilities with the safety and reliability that industries require. IFS has unquestionable expertise in the complex realities of the industrial world – they have proven they can activate and apply AI in capital intensive and asset heavy environments. Together, we’re deploying AI where stakes are highest.” said Garvan Doyle, Applied AI Lead at Anthropic.

William Grant & Sons – the iconic distillers behind Grant’s whisky and Hendrick’s gin – is using Resolve to cut downtime and overhaul operations. Before, fragmented data meant that 38% of repairs carried out by engineers were emergency, not proactive – leading to costly downtime.

Now, Resolve reads complex plant schematics, plugs into existing sensors to predict failure before it happens, and diagnoses faults based on what engineers actually need. Technicians use Resolve to diagnose faults based on the sound of a rattling pipe, video showing how a part’s moving strangely, or fluctuations in pressure.

The distillery has slashed downtime and boosted output. The team estimates these changes will save £8.4 million annually at the site, once business-as-usual operations are established.

“IFS Nexus Black understood our industry – they weren’t trying to apply something generic”, said Badri Narasimhan, Chief Technology & Business Growth Officer for William Grant & Sons. “It’s been innovation that’s practical, fast, and actually connected to results, not theory.”

Beyond the factory floor, IFS Nexus Black solutions with Anthropic are solving crucial problems in disaster response – critical as weather related losses now equal 36% of US GDP. Last year, 27 weather disasters with billion-dollar losses hit the US, up from 14 in 2019.

Technicians are at the heart of relief efforts for severe storms, wildfires and floods. In the chaos of a wildfire or severe storm, the field service worker is the quiet hero – driving in treacherous conditions and scaling transmission poles to get lights back on and hospitals back up and running. Now, planners back at headquarters can restore power faster:

• Predictive analytics assess which areas are likely to be hit and when.
• Technicians are directed to highest priority sites, and join the dots between adjacent power companies for mutual aid.
• On site, Resolve advises on the repair based on image or video capture, and automatically re-directs essential parts.

The result is gas and utilities firms can now restore power after major events 40% faster than they could without a comparable tool – that translates to more communities protected, and schools and hospitals back up and running faster.