Pieter van Schalkwyk

Industrial Operations & Engineering | Defining the right problems before automation and AI

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

About

I work on one problem: how industrial companies move from digital visibility to governed autonomous action. I’m CEO and Founder of XMPro, where we are building the Agentic Operations category for mission-critical industrial environments. My work sits at the intersection of operational context, digital twins, multi-agent systems, AI governance, and bounded autonomy. I started my career as a plant engineer, then moved through workflow automation, event intelligence, digital twins, and industrial AI. That path shapes how I think about autonomy. AI in operations cannot be treated like generic enterprise software when it touches real assets, production constraints, safety rules, and human decision rights. Over the years, I have seen most automation and AI initiatives struggle not because of technology, but because the underlying decision problem was never clearly defined. My focus is on first-principles thinking in complex industrial environments. What outcome is actually desired? What constraints truly matter? Who has the right to decide? What can be automated safely? And where must human judgment remain in the loop? Sometimes the answer is automation. Sometimes it is a change in process, incentives, or decision rights. Often, it is realizing the problem being solved was not the right one to begin with. That is why I care about the responsible deployment of AI in mission-critical operations. Not as a slogan, and not as a compliance exercise. As an engineering problem. The next phase of industrial AI will not be defined by better dashboards or more copilots. It will be defined by systems that can reason, coordinate, and act within clear operational boundaries. That is the work I write about in The Digital Engineer and the category we are building at XMPro: Agentic Operations.

Experience

  • CEO at XMPro Inc
    Dec 2009 - Present · 16 yrs 8 mos

    At XMPRO I lead a team of dedicated professionals who obsess over ways to deal with the deluge of real-time data from IoT and OT sensors and devices. We design, develop, and deploy innovative event-based Digital Twins and Event Intelligence applications. XMPRO’s Low-Code Application Development Platform enables engineers and subject matter experts to build and deploy real-time applications in weeks. The platform makes it easy to connect to a variety of data sources, apply real-time analytics, and trigger rule-based prescriptive recommendations when specific events occur in your data. With XMPRO, SMEs can use their expert knowledge to build a portfolio of real-time event intelligence apps to prevent asset downtime, reduce production losses, and prevent safety incidents. These apps can be rapidly deployed across different asset types, plants, operational areas, and business units to scale your digital transformation without overloading your IT team. XMPRO has a proven track record of helping organizations in asset-intensive industries improve operational excellence, reduce risk, and increase asset utilization. I have more than 15 years of experience in developing business performance management solutions. I’ve led our R&D team to architect and build an innovative low-code software platform that enables companies to more easily develop custom IoT and Digital Twin software applications that are specific to their business and that they can’t buy from a vendor “off the shelf”. My experience as an engineer has equipped me to lead the development and marketing of our Event Intelligence and Digital Twin Application suite. I am fortunate to live on the Gold Coast in Australia. However, I spend most of my time in the US and Europe talking to customers, engineers, and developers on innovative ways to leverage IoT and our platform to create the next Digital Twin “killer app”.

  • Digital Twin Consortium (6 yrs 2 mos)
    • DTC Ambassador
      Feb 2024 - Present · 2 yrs 6 mos

      I am excited to be an inaugural Ambassador for the Digital Twin Consortium® (DTC), a role that reflects our commitment at XMPro to advancing digital transformation through intelligent operations through digital twins, intelligent automation, and AI. https://www.digitaltwinconsortium.org/dtc-ambassadors/ This opportunity allows me to collaborate globally, especially in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Korea, Japan, UAE, and the USA, promoting the adoption and innovation of digital twins across industries. I'm looking forward to working with fellow ambassadors and the DTC to make a tangible impact on the digital twin ecosystem. A big thank you to the Digital Twin Consortium for this honor. Here's to creating a more efficient and sustainable future together!

    • Co-chair AI Cross Consortium Joint Working Group - OMG
      Mar 2023 - Present · 3 yrs 5 mos

    • Co-chair Natural Resources Work Group
      Jun 2020 - Present · 6 yrs 2 mos

  • Contributor at Forbes Technology Council
    Jun 2019 - Present · 7 yrs 2 mos

  • Industrial Internet Consortium (4 yrs 3 mos)
    • Chair - IIC Digital Twin Interoperability Task Group
      Jun 2016 - Aug 2020 · 4 yrs 3 mos

      Chair for Digital Twin Interoperability TG in the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) Awarded the Industrial Internet Consortium Technical Innovation Award in February 2019

    • Chair - Digital Twin Interoperability, Digital Transformation, and Distributed Ledger Task Groups
      Jun 2016 - Jan 2020 · 3 yrs 8 mos

      Chair for 3 Task Groups (TG) in the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) - Digital Twin Interoperability TG - Industrial Digital Transformation TG - Industrial Distributed Ledger TG Awarded the Industrial Internet Consortium Technical Innovation Award in February 2019

  • CEO at FlowCentric Technologies Pty (Ltd)
    Jan 2000 - Dec 2009 · 10 yrs

    FlowCentric is a Microsoft-based Business Process Management and Workflow solution designed for Business Analysts to implement process and workflow solutions with no or minimal coding. I was the CEO and major shareholder of the company. We have established offices in the UK, Australia and South Africa and have a number of blue chip clients that include Royal Bank of Scotland, SABMiller Africa & Asia, Anglo Platinum and Harmony Gold.