Representative End User Clients
Representative Automation Clients
Representative Software Clients
The ARC Advisory Group Singapore Forum took place on 7 August 2025 under the theme Winning in the Industrial AI Era. Hexagon participated as a Gold Sponsor for this year’s edition, marking its second consecutive year of involvement. The event drew more than 180 attendees from across the industrial automation community and highlighted the increasing role of AI and emerging technologies in the sector.
Tom Kurtz, Vice President of EAM Portfolio Strategy & Enablement, delivered a presentation titled “Effective AI: Leveraging Emerging Technologies in Driving Your Industrial Processes.” With decades of experience in enterprise software and consulting, he has held roles in professional services, sales enablement, product management, and product development. The full presentation is now available on YouTube, or you can watch it here:
Data: Where It All Begins
Tom began by discussing the foundation of all digital initiatives—data—drawing on Hexagon’s survey of 400 industry leaders on Data Connectivity & Visibility. Key concerns included poor integration, low visibility across systems, and gaps in transformation efforts. He reflected on the evolution of data, noting that it continues to be disruptive and evolves at an unprecedented rate, with AI emerging as one of the latest developments in this evolution.
Tom highlighted that, given the speed and scale of this change, organizations need to connect data across silos, structure it effectively, and unlock the value of data, including data stored in legacy systems. He also noted the importance of considering not only the value of data, but also its accuracy, security, and privacy. With data as the foundation, AI is increasingly being applied to extract insights and support decision-making, though it is not flawless. As he exemplified, “AI can be right, but can be not quite right.”
The “Digital Backbone” and AI Strategy
Tom further elaborated on Hexagon’s perspective, explaining how the company brings together data, technology, and processes to support its customers. Speaking from the Asset Lifecycle division, he described how his team works to unify a digital representation—a digital thread—across Hexagon’s solutions.
“Basically, what we're looking at is that when you have all these systems, we want the data to be shared consistently. It’s not just about integrating data from A to B; we aim to have an underlying platform that manages and shares that data,” he said.
At the core of this approach is a unified foundation, or a “digital backbone,” that powers data ingestion, contextualization, and intelligence across the asset lifecycle. Some key components of this foundation include:
Unifying and contextualizing data across projects, engineering, operations, and maintenance.
Delivering an interoperable asset model to support trusted, explainable AI.
Enabling rapid, scalable AI adoption across products and workflows without duplicating efforts.
Building on the foundation of connected and structured data, Tom then outlined Hexagon’s AI strategy, which focuses on three main components:
Data Contextualization: Hexagon aims to automate the ingestion of information—including P&IDs, spreadsheets, and equipment documentation—without the heavy upfront configuration traditionally required. By contextualizing this data within Hexagon’s solutions, organizations can mine information more efficiently, improving both the accuracy and speed of analysis.
Force Multipliers: AI is applied to optimize core workflows and processes. One example is predictive routing in Hexagon’s Smart 3D product, which uses reinforcement learning to suggest optimal piping paths during facility design. This reduces strain points, improves constructability, and accelerates the design process. This approach illustrates how AI can amplify workforce productivity without replacing human decision-making.
HxGN Alix (Digital Assistant): A generative AI–powered assistant embedded within Hexagon’s Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems, Alix enables natural-language queries for knowledge retrieval and gradually provides more advanced insights, including predictive and prescriptive guidance. Tom described how Alix can assist users across varying levels of expertise, from basic information retrieval to more complex analysis and recommendations, adapting its support to the user’s needs.
Through these examples, Tom illustrated how AI, when combined with structured and contextualized data, can drive actionable insights, enhance efficiency, and support more informed decision-making across industrial operations.