Arthnex – Arthwind’s Powerful Blade Maintenance Platform

In this insightful episode of Uptime Spotlight, Allen Hall and Joel
Saxum welcome back Armando Costa Rego, CEO of ArthWind, to discuss
their groundbreaking new software platform, ArthNex. This
data-driven solution transforms wind turbine blade management by
connecting field technicians directly with engineers in real-time,
dramatically reducing downtime and optimizing repairs. Visit
ArthWind at https://arthwind.com.br Connect with Armando on
LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/armandocostarego/ Allen
Hall: Alright, Armando, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you
guys. It's a pleasure to be here again. Yeah. It's been a couple of
months since we've last had you on the podcast. But a lot has
happened since then. Earth, wind, obviously huge Brazilian
presence. You guys are working with most of the operators or much
of most of the installed base in Brazil, and you're expanding out
into the United States and other places. But the product offerings
you have created over that short time span since we last talked are
quite amazing and you want to announce this new software product.
It's called what? ArthNex. Armando Costa Rego: Art Next, yeah. Yes.
Yeah. This predator came from the idea to, to go deep in the value
chain of the hippers, you know, everybody in the march, I think
since 2017, the industry has experienced, uh, a fast improvement in
the drone solution, the rover that we started like four years ago,
and everybody's talking about how long it takes an inspection and
how long pressure to produce in minutes. So we are talk 30, 20, 25.
For me, what matters if we, we create data to hipper, so the, the
discussion of the architect is, okay, we jump into this phase of,
to discuss how fast an inspection we are now, uh, uh, using this
data to provide it to the owners in operators, OEME, whatever, in
the player in the market would be interested to use our. Maybe he
pair knowledge capabilities to go direct to actions that can
prioritize what to do, how to do, and sometimes why to do. Yeah,
that's the question. Nobody do this question why to do that. Yeah.
Those make sense or not? So the data will tell you what makes sense
or those not make sense. Joel Saxum: Yeah. So what, like when we
look at most platforms out there, asset management blade inspection
platforms, it's here's your inspections, here's the findings from
them. Here's a Allen Hall: spreadsheet. Joel Saxum: [00:02:00]
Stop. Yeah, that's it, right? There's that. There's no just looking
at the earth Next platform. When Alan and I were peeking at it
yesterday, it was like. Here's a dashboard that shows you where
your leading edge erosion status is on, on all your whole fleet.
And this like, oh, that's great. Like, oh, your overall risk score
is this, oh, this turbine has a risk score of that. Like, oh,
what's going on here? These are the ones that you need to stop now.
Look at in two weeks, look at in 12 weeks, like. There was
actionable data and that's before we even get into the operational
part of repairs, but actionable data that you can look at
dashboard. Now I know what decisions I need to make today. Armando
Costa Rego: Yeah, that's right. That's right. So it is a clean
data, it's clear data. We can interact with the image. We are not
focused in show, like the entire blade in the platform because that
consumes a lot of dev time of development, you know, so, and we
note that only 4% of the emails have something to tell you. Yeah,
right. So some point of internet. So we work exclusively. And that
information that's really useful to the operator. Allen Hall: Yeah,
and I think that's the problem, right? Is that when we get drone
images or internal inspections, there's a lot of data. Yeah. That
then as we've talked to operators in the United States, we have
engineers, usually junior engineers, going through all that data,
trying to pick out what's important and what's not important so
that they can develop a plan themselves internally, but they're
wasting. Thousands of engineering hours doing it. Yes. Joel Saxum:
And the tr one of the troubles that we talk about regularly on, on
the show is lack of technicians, but also the lack of engineering
knowledge and support. So when you have a blade engineer that's,
this regularly happens in the states, I'm in charge, I'm the blade
engineer, I'm in charge of a thousand turbines. What? So they don't
have the bandwidth to take care of, to look through all of these
different things, and that's where the earth wind. Team with the
Arthrex platform and all the engineering expertise you guys have in
the background can help operators like that out a lot because they
become their, you know, turn the tap on, turn the tap off blade
engineering team that they can use. Armando Costa Rego: Yeah. You
know, in ArthWind we combining, we have a tried that we involve
right people, we are talking about knowledge. And the experience of
these people. Out of the 140 people that work for art in Brazil now
have experienced some parts of the value chain, or in blade design,
or in blade manufacturing, or in the OEME or make root cause
analysis in broken blades. You know, so we cover all life cycle.
And the second pilot is technology. So we were the first company,
maybe the, the South hemisphere in the world. To make an inspection
with autonomous drone back in 2017. So in Brazil there nobody was
talking about drone. And the last one is methodology. We are. Very
confident that we cannot change the methodology, otherwise we will
have a mess with data. So since 2017, we created our own blade
book, just to be straight to what this data does means. Yeah. Okay.
If there is another, uh, categorization, for example, everybody's
talk about categorization, that's a huge discussion. I disagree
that we need to categorize from one after five. You know, I think
that blade can talk much more than five levels. Uh, but when you
have our own methodology, we can combine the data from the
inspection that we did from the ground, from in the manufacturing,
and we can have a much more clear view during a root cause analysis
when you will go to the blade, the data book and check the results.
Yeah, that is no confusion. If you crack, if the elimination, if
the a Cat 5 is a Cat 3, we tell the history of each damage and the
cause, the potential cause of those damage because our engineering
is backed by blade designer. So they know what they are looking and
what it, it can make this damage happens in the field, you know?
Allen Hall: Absolutely. And I think, uh, something that's missed
for American operators is realizing the talent that sits in Brazil,
because Brazil was a blade manufacturer. That's right. Long before
America really started ramping up in blades and then even after
America slowly stopped making blades. They were still being made in
Brazil. Yeah, so the, the manufacturing technology is in Brazil.
The engineers who design blades and know all the inner structures
of the blades and how to repair the blades and why certain blades
performs this way and other, and others that way, that knowledge
base is in Brazil, which makes art wind so. Valuable because you
have just a huge people resource that doesn't really exist in other
parts of the world. Maybe the only a place I would assume is like
Denmark is where you have that kind of relationship between people
that worked in the factory and understand how the bill blades then
moved up to engineering and then moved up to management. That's
kind of there. But your people are hard to find in the states.
Yeah. And that and that thought process that goes along with it
because you had to suffer through all the things that happened in
the blade factory and then out in the real world. You develop some
of these systems long before United States operators have. So that
gives you like. Literally a 15 to 20 year jump of what's out there
otherwise, which is why Earth Wind is so valuable and whatnot,
which I don't understand why American operators aren't using your
resources as much just because you have the technology, you have
the knowledge Joel Saxum: and that, and now, like today, we wanted
to make sure we talked about Earth Next, the new platform. Yes. And
that knowledge base is what built that platform. Absolutely, it
did. It's people that understand the whole value chain from
manufacturing. I guess this, this sounds like a sales pitch for
you, but we liked it so much when we saw I was blown away a lot,
Armando Costa Rego: you know? You know, yes. Back into 13 x we, we
spent the last, the last seven years only processing data from the
inspection, but we, all of us came from the Heary industry. Yeah.
Yeah. I started the business of in Europe in 2009. Yeah. Yeah. So I
was dispatching two technicians for 23 countries like pizza, you
know, 48 hours with, yeah. Armando Costa Rego: And I, I thought
that the way that we was managing repair 15 years ago. It's not the
way that we can accept anymore with modern blades, because if you
see the margins, the uh, uh, the safety margin of the blades do not
allow lack of no less during the hip air. So that point that a x
will play a crucial value in this field, because if you go to the
hipper, everybody talk, uh, how long takes your inspection, doesn't
matter how long are you, save you in downtime with my data because.
The new feature of the architect, we are going through the hip air
value chain and we are broken in pieces, each task, and connecting
the field technician direct with engineering. Yes. What happens in
the industry today after your technicians go? With a standard
procedure, they start to grind. So it take three hours maybe to
access the damage. They start to grind, Hey, I found a wave here.
There was nothing procedure. So they climb down. They full stop.
Yeah, let the turbine stop it. Go to the engineering by WhatsApp or
whatever else saying the engineer,