consumers to make faster, better-informed
decisions, Shell says. Ultimately, Shell
argues, the platform can help bring down
the total cost of asset ownership. Aimed at
the B2B industrial sector, the project was
initially rolled out in India in late 2017.
‘Shelly’, the Alexa or Siri of oil, is a helpful
bot that uses AI to help consumers fi nd the
best solution for their lubrication needs.
Though not voice-interactive, Shelly
fi nds the right products for any piece of
equipment with full access to technical and
safety data sheets on the various products
available from Shell, as well as case studies.
The mobile web-based app platform will
also recommend alternatives if there is
an issue with existing products or supply
chains.
Shell has been working with Teneo and
its scalable AI-conversational interaction
platform to develop intelligent, multilingual
cross-device applications linked
to legacy system data. LubeChat follows
on from the Shell Virtual Assistant trials
of 2015 – an earlier attempt at a similar
development. Diogo Coutinho, senior
product manager at Shell, explains the
rationale behind the use of AI in lubrication
selection: “We are looking to help our B2B
customers and distributors achieve more,
whether that is saving on costs to their
operation or driving more revenue to their
own business. That might be using a new
website, mobile apps, tools that require
machine learning or
AI, to solve those
problems when
required and when
that is relevant – leveraging what is
necessary to address the problem.
“The main friction for users that
LubeChat came to address was access to
expert information. This particular domain
is very technical and very specifi c. Our
customers were not satisfi ed with the time
it would take to get someone on the phone
that understood what their problem was
and would be able to answer their query.”
He continues: “We’re very conscious of
the diff erent entry points that a user might
have, for example the main ones being the
product name, the equipment name or
the specifi c application that the engineer
is looking for. Shelly might ask for the year
of manufacture, the maker and model
number and then will notify the user that,
for this piece of equipment, it should be
one oil for the engine, one for the gearbox,
one for the hydraulics. The entry point may
also be the application. You may ask the
chat bot what hydraulic oils are available,
and it will also handle that diff erent query.
“This is 24/7 virtual assistance for
any needs you may have with machine
lubrication. It also responds to any
commercial needs. The platform will tell
you the closest distributor to supply the
required oil.”
LUBRICATION – PROCUREMENT
SMART AND GETTING SMARTER
Like many of the Tier 1 players, Shell
already off ers complimentary lubrication
services. They include oil analysis reports
and an oil condition monitoring service.
Shell LubeAdvisor’s suite of services,
meanwhile, already off ers 24/7 technical
help via the Shell LubeMatch and Shell
LubeAdvisor websites.
Next-generation digital tools are
expected to increasingly
leverage this type
of additional and
supplementary
knowledge base to
lower O&M costs and
improve profi tability.
Shell is already
exploring this type of
value-added online
development. Coutinho
explains: “What we are looking to add
next quarter is general troubleshooting
advice. Customers can explore a problem
from a list of frequent symptoms. We then
suggest a solution.”
Shell is also exploring other digital multichannel
options too, such as live video
screening to support fault diagnostics.
As Coutinho concludes: “LubeChat and
these other platforms we’re building,
we’re looking to get all the high-quality
data signals that we can. Partnerships or
even direct integration with sensor data
to provide solutions is something we’d
defi nitely be interested in. We’re looking
to do as many integrations as possible to
leverage that power. We’ve been working
more closely than ever to integrate those
things.”
Tools like Shelly are designed to save the
customer a major headache, and there’s
no doubt it’s saving Shell time on customer
care, too. But perhaps more signifi cant
is the clear trend towards increasingly
sophisticated digital tools based on AI and
big data. Exploiting growing bandwidth and
the exponential growth in data volumes,
the phenomena of Industry 4.0 is set to
deeply penetrate every sector.
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