How Democratized Artificial Intelligence Can Move Manufacturing to a New Evolution Pace
Many
transformations
provide opportunities for
manufacturing companies to
differentiate
themselves
from
the
competition.
Threats are introduced by
opening the door to new
entrants in businesses that
had been considered strong
fortresses for many years.
The current challenge facing operations across the globe can be
summarized as follows:
Make an increasing variety of products, on shorter lead
times with smaller runs, but with flawless quality. Improve
our return on our investment by automating and
introducing new technology in processes and materials so
we can cut prices to meet local and foreign demand.
Mechanize – but keep your schedules flexible, your
inventories low, your capital costs minimal, and your work
force contented.
A few years ago, it was not
imaginable to have new
Dr. John Carrier, System Dynamics Group at the MIT Sloan School
entrant in the aerospace
market such as SpaceX 3 ; and a new
A RTIFICIAL I NTELLIGENCE IS B ECOMING
automaker entering from scratch in just a
A K EY T ECHNOLOGY FOR
few years, as Tesla accomplished. But those
M ANUFACTURING
technology and business successes and
subsequent disruption already happened in
In the short introduction above, you have
other legacy industries including Amazon®,
read some keywords: real-time, anticipation,
Google®, Netflix®, Easyjet®, Paypal®, Uber®
simplification,
trustable,
connected,
and AirB&B®. Learning from large volumes
learning, data, fast, next best action.
of data captured from the field was a key
That is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) and
driver of making those changes a success.
other emerging technologies are looking to
Manufacturing companies have to move
help to achieve excellence. AI helps to adjust
fast to learn from data and adapt their
the execution level from awareness, to
pace of evolution to avoid having new
guided, to autonomous thinking and acting
entrants becoming leaders in their own
on, more and more, the operations that
industry domain (from 1955, only 12% of
must be executed.
brick and mortar companies are still in the
Fortune 500) 4 .
AI is a scientific domain historically
preserved for researchers, data scientists,
and large companies, and in most of the
cases, very difficult to implement in real-life
3
https://disruptionhub.com/disruption-aerospace-industry/
4
http://www.aei.org/publication/fortune-500-firms-1955-v-2016-only-12-remain-thanks-to-the-creative-destruction-that-
fuels-economic-prosperity/
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November 2017