The Winds of...Technology

The one constant in technology is the relentlessness of its advancement to ubiquity in every facet of modern life.  In my lifetime, the march of technological advancement has changed the way people live, work, and play.  

In 1987 at the age of 11, I parlayed two years' worth of lawn mowing money (I know...2 years but remember this was before the period of easy Fed money) into the purchase of a Commodore 64 PC with its world-beating 64 kB of RAM. I was the first kid in my neighborhood to own a PC, and a PC in the home was still a novelty in the neighborhood.  At the time, it was difficult to imagined every home with access to computing power and connected to a global network with the entirely of human knowledge accessible in a few keystrokes.  As the 1980s gave way to the roaring 1990s, the internet gained popularity just as the purchase price of personal computer began to drop. The PC boom was on and was self-perpetuating as Moore's law was reinforced.  (Spoiler alert: Moore's law really wasn't a law as it was a prognostication and is believed to have ended in 2012-2013.  This link is a great read on Moore's Law and AI Wired.CO.UK Article.

Moore’s law ending allows us to jump from artificial machine intelligence – a top down, human engineered approach; to natural machine intelligence – one that is bottom up and self-improving

In the late 90s, the proliferation of personal computing was joined by the rapid, mass-market penetration of cellular voice network in digital format.  Cellular voice, in the last analysis, ultimately became a 'gateway drug' for mobile computing.  Spurred by smaller system on a chip (SoC) technology, more efficient internal memory, and the movement of data storage to Cloud-based applications, mobile devices could now perform all the functions and at equal or greater speed to tethered counterparts, precipitating the demise of the traditional PC much in the same way mobile phone technology has killed the landline.  

In the 2000s, social networking achieved mass market penetration, and we now live two distinct lives simultaneously, reality and digital, moving fluidly between them. Communication and connectivity are no longer inhibited by borders, boundaries, or barriers. Paralleling the industrial revolution, we are living in a time one could refer to as post-modern technological.  This is especially true as companies like Facebook integrate 'learning' bots into the Messenger platform that will enable users to message the bots, like they would a human, and receive on-demand and customizable content as well as a new way to transact. Check out this Forbes Article.

Companies and developers have shown a surge of interest in bot technology and their potential to change the way people talk to businesses and transact, receive customer service or consume entertainment.

Consider for a moment the consumer and commercial advantages of the introduction and adoption of various internet-based marketplaces. These virtual markets have introduced market discipline into otherwise shadowy corners of the economy in which pricing was not subjected to competition and, therefore, constituted an ever increasing tax on business and the general economy.  In the transportation industry, for example, Transportation Management Solutions (TMS) have upended the manner in which the demand side (consumers, businesses) awards shipments and freight to the supply side (carriers).  Prior to the TMS with its stock exchange-like transparency and shipment level price discovery, shipments were awarded based on inertia and permitted pricing complacency without the ‘hand of the market’ picking winners and losers, absent competition for each shipment. As freight began to be bid on the spot market or tariff rates displayed in stack ranking, prices dropped by 10% depending on the lane, and options for capacity increased.

This brings us to an industry on the verge of a technological revolution.  The HVAC industry is built upon technological and mechanical principles, yet the industry is only now beginning to consider the productivity and competitive advantages existing and emerging technological disruption can help to advance the core technology.  Once a staid industry, the oncoming shortage of skilled labor as the Boomer Generation retires is creating the economic incentive to leverage technology to improve capacity and capability.  Emerging technology tools now can scale knowledge and expertise to every project without any concern for geographic limitations. 

Source: ACHRNews.com

In the form of wearable technology specifically designed for commercial application, startups are bringing technology to market that allows HVAC firms to scale the leadership, knowledge, and experience of their senior team members to all members of the team, essentially making every technician a senior team member in their access to knowledge.  Powered by a cellular or WIFI connection, HVAC technicians now have access to support, training, and mentoring through the use of ANSI-certified smart glasses, capable of two-way video, video recording, and photographic cataloging.  By using smart glasses with video and photo functionality, service managers or senior technician can now more effectively support, develop, and mentor a technician team without having to physically travel anywhere.  They monitor a Facebook-like data feed of incoming field videos and photographs.  Commercial client benefit not only from the knowledge sharing but also from the transparency and ready access to proof of work.  And, the best is yet to come.  The wearable technology market overall and specific to commercial applications is a nascent and modest $1.42 billion market.

Wearable Technology Growth by Industry

Source: Grand View Research, Inc.

Even though predictive maintenance has been around for over 30 years, it remains confined to the high-end industrial market due to the high barriers to entry such as cost ($50,000 investment in the hardware) and trained labor to read and react to the reports.  (As you may imagine, Vibration Analysts are about as plentiful in the labor market as VHS video store clerks.)

For many businesses, HVAC is a critical element of business operations. Temporary HVAC outages can equate to permanent business outages.  Since the early 1980s, the expensive solution to prevent unexpected HVAC Outages has been predictive maintenance, or the ability to utilize ultrasonic frequency and vibration analysis to predict when components of an HVAC system were going to fail before they actually failed.  (Think of the sound an old fan belt makes when a car is started on a cold day.) 

The barriers to entry are being broken down through the combination of cloud-based servers ‘learning’ in real time, mobile sensors, and a connected smartphone equipped with an APP.  The ability to predict outages in any commercial setting for a nominal per machine fee is now available to every sector of the economy.  Instead of unexpected outages that interrupt operations or paying for repairs and replacement in a peak demand market, the mass market version of predictive maintenance provides a budget roadmap and predictability of operating expense for HVAC equipment.

With emerging technologies coming to market, It is an exciting time to be in the HVAC industry.  It is reminiscent of the PC and mobile phone revolution of the late 90s, the social media and smartphone revolution of the 2000s and the application and cloud-based revolution of the 2010s.