Adopt AI pragmatically, advises Aaron Merkin of Fluke Reliability

Digital transformation, an emphasis on supply chain resilience, and the permeation of AI into different industries were all trends Aaron Merkin, CTO of Fluke Reliability expected to shape the industry in 2025, he shared with IoT Insider in an exclusive interview.

For the first trend Merkin pinpointed, digital transformation, he explained: “Something we hear consistently from [customers] is the pressure from the management teams and investors to be competitive and get more out of assets … the ability to collect more information about those assets is going to be critical for them to be successful going forward.” 

The second trend, supply chain resilience, can be understood through framing the particular challenges businesses experienced during Covid, and a resolve to not face the same challenges. However, there are current ongoing factors too that are placing an emphasis on supply chain resilience, Merkin explained.

“With geopolitical tensions and a push for reshoring, as well as the Inflation Reduction Act [2022] and a drive to bring manufacturing back into the US, there are a lot of changes in the supply chain.”

In spite of all this, Fluke Reliability’s outlook for 2025 was “optimistic”, as he believed there was continued growth and demand for Fluke’s products and their customers’. Fluke provides hardware, software and services to optimise asset performance in manufacturing. 

Adoption of AI 

The third trend Merkin identified was the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). It fits the bill for supporting digital transformation and for strengthening supply chain resilience, as it can perform tasks such as predicting inventory and predictive maintenance.

“If you have that foresight of what’s going to happen with your asset, you have high confidence that you’re going to be able to predict what type of maintenance is required … [this] allows you to run a much leaner supply chain,” said Merkin.

“We’ve talked about the difference between robustness and resilience,” he shared. “Historically, when you’re looking at running lean manufacturing and optimisation, you tend to focus on robustness: it may be a single supply chain, but is it one I have high confidence in, that performs very well?” As a result, mindsets have shifted towards resilience, flexibility, and the ability to adapt to change.

Because AI is being seen as a critical tool to increase optimisation for companies like Fluke’s customers, which are operating in the industrial sectors, I posed a question to Merkin as to whether he saw companies feeling the pressure to adopt AI – or risk falling behind their competitors.

“More broadly, we see general adoption,” he said. “The way I look at it, is that you should begin with the end in mind. Rather than say, ‘we’re going to define a project and adopt AI’, or ‘we’re going to experiment before we adopt AI’, you should have in mind what the results you’re trying to get from adopting [AI].”

The risk companies run is being rushed to adopt AI and not do it in a structured way that produces them results.

There are important questions companies can ask themselves, such as: “Do we have the internal connectivity to access data so it can be pulled into the model? What type of insight would you like to have? What data would you need to have?

“You could get stuck even earlier trying to create a model and realise you’re missing a key piece of data. Do you have the ability to either build the internal integration to access it, or do you need to potentially defer the project because you need to build up that data set?”

Pragmatic adoption of technology

Merkin said he saw the adoption of AI being less to do with competitive factors or supply chain resilience, although it certainly helps. Instead, it can be traced back to a wider challenge the industrial sectors have been facing for years: a shortage of available labour.

“Post-Covid, a limited labour pool is forcing customers who previously may have done something manually [to adopt AI]. 

“To do things manually, walk around and inspect assets … understanding health and making predictions are two things that are constrained. That’s where we see AI being deployed, to offset that reduction in skilled labour.” 

“There’s a saying that revolutions happen very slowly and then all at once,” Merkin added, in reference to characterising the adoption of AI as ‘reactionary’. Although labour shortages are not a new challenge for manufacturing, coming out of Covid crystallised this, as many left the labour force in droves, and retired. 

“Change is inevitable,” Merkin concluded. “We will see in 2025 continued pressures on efficiency, challenges with the labour face, challenges with supply chain … We think that the pragmatic adoption of tech will be critical to address those headwinds.” 

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