How Generative AI Is Transforming Access to Industrial Data with the CONNECT AI Assistant

But leveraging this data remains challenging: incomplete data models, information silos, a lack of IT resources, and time wasted searching for the right information…

It is precisely to address these needs that AVEVA has developed CONNECT, the cloud platform that unifies, contextualizes, and makes all industrial data available. With CONNECT, teams design faster, plan more accurately, and manage their operations with a continuous, connected, and reliable view.

And today, this potential is multiplied tenfold thanks to the arrival of a new tool that has become indispensable: the CONNECT AI Assistant, a conversational assistant designed specifically for the industry.

Why will manufacturers need an AI Assistant?

Imagine a typical day at a factory.
An unexpected shutdown occurs on a production line. Nothing dramatic, but disruptive enough to slow down production. Immediately, the teams spring into action: an operator opens one dashboard, a maintenance manager checks another, an engineer digs into the history logs, and an analyst starts extracting data to figure out what happened.

Everyone is looking for the same information… but in different tools.
Excel files pile up, as do IT requests. Data is cross-referenced, the timeline of events is reconstructed, and comparisons are made with the previous week. And by the time the first conclusions finally emerge, half the day has already passed.

Every industrial team is familiar with this scenario. Not because of a lack of skills, but because traditional methods are reaching their limits in the face of increasingly complex operations and the sheer volume of available data.

This is where generative AI changes the game.
With generative AI, there’s no more endless data mining or technical silos: all you have to do is ask a question in natural language—“Why did Line 3 shut down this morning?”—to receive, within seconds, a clear, contextualised, and illustrated report that highlights trends and even suggests probable causes.

AI can go even further: trigger an alert, suggest a corrective action, generate a dashboard, or automatically cross-reference multiple sources of information. What used to take hours… now takes just a few moments.

For the industry, this means:

• less time wasted searching for information
• immediate visibility for everyone
• faster and more reliable decisions
• increased productivity and asset availability

And above all, this means that data is finally accessible to everyone—without technical expertise and without relying on IT. Information serves people, not the other way around.

What the CONNECT AI Assistant Actually Enables

Beyond the concept itself, the CONNECT AI Assistant stands out for its ease of use and immediate effectiveness. Once connected to CONNECT, simply open the visualisation and start interacting in the dedicated panel. No complex training, no prior configuration: the tool is ready to use.

Thanks to its understanding of natural language, the assistant does more than just search for a keyword. It analyzes the intent behind the question and automatically scans all relevant sources: historical data, real-time data, trends, dashboards, documents, 2D diagrams, 3D models, saved content, and more…

In practice, a user can ask:

• “What are the bearing and gondola temperatures for GE07?”
• “Which bearing gets the hottest?”
• “Was the temperature higher this week or last week?”
• “Have there been any outages at the Hornsea wind farm in the last 24 hours?”
• “Do I have a dashboard showing usage?”
• “Is there a trend in GE01’s power generation?”

The assistant can also analyse and summarise technical documentation:

• “Does this document recommend any action in the event of a bearing overheating?”
• “Do we have a 3D model of the Hornsea wind farm?”
• “What technical diagrams are available for the GE07?”

In just a few seconds, the information is retrieved, interpreted, and presented in a clear, illustrated, and actionable format.
What used to require multiple tools, multiple people, and several hours… is now done instantly.

Generative AI: Why is this technology a game-changer?

What’s striking about the latest advances in generative AI is just how much it expands our scope of action. Where we once had to master technical tools or consult multiple specialists, it’s now possible to analyse complex data as easily as asking a colleague a question.

In just a few seconds, the AI explores all available sources, cross-references relevant information, generates a clear summary or a graph, suggests hypotheses, detects unusual patterns… and can even automate the next steps: send an alert, produce a report, create a predictive model, or prepare a notification for the teams.

What the human eye would never have spotted—a slight deviation, an unlikely correlation, an emerging risk—the AI highlights immediately. It transforms raw data into knowledge, and then into action.

In industry, this capability opens up major opportunities:

• more reliable operations, because they are better monitored and better understood,
• a dramatic reduction in the time spent analysing and consolidating data,
• greater risk anticipation thanks to intelligent models,
• more sustainable and efficient processes, continuously optimised,
• smoother collaboration among teams, which finally share a common, accessible, and contextualised vision.
  
  

With this approach, CONNECT becomes much more than a data platform: it becomes a truly AI-ready environment, where information is structured, secure, and immediately actionable—by both teams and algorithms. The industry is no longer content to simply produce data; it now harnesses its full potential.

The advent of generative AI marks a decisive turning point for manufacturers. For the first time, it’s possible to interact directly with data, understand facilities without technical expertise, anticipate risks before they occur, and accelerate decision-making at all levels of the organisation.

With CONNECT and its AI Assistant, this promise becomes a reality. The tool does more than just enhance operations—it transforms the way teams work, collaborate, and manage their facilities. Data is no longer scattered, difficult to access, or reserved for a few specialists: it becomes a collective competitive advantage, immediately available to operators, maintenance supervisors, engineers, managers, and decision-makers.

In an industrial world where every minute counts, where every deviation can have an operational or financial impact, having an assistant capable of understanding a question, exploring millions of data points, producing an analysis, and suggesting a course of action… is no longer a luxury. It’s the new standard.

The industry of tomorrow will be faster, smarter, and more sustainable.
With CONNECT, it can be that way today.