How artificial intelligence can help optimize and drive innovation to manufacturing processes?

The manufacturing industry has always been looking at innovative solutions to streamline processes. And there is no surprise that artificial intelligence holds considerable value to future development in manufacturing. It has the potential to improve and extend human capabilities and assist businesses to gain more, faster and efficiently. Applications of AI and robots in industrial manufacturing are unprecedently gaining momentum, as they tend to revolutionize and develop mass-production. 

Since artificial intelligence has become crucial to manufacturing and is redrafting what the industry will look like in the future, it is significant that manufacturers implement this tech and consider it as the next major factor in the industry. At the same time, AI is crucial for them to stay competitive in the wave of early technology adopters. 

AI Disruption in Manufacturing

Today, manufacturers have realized the potential of IoT, and are increasingly investing in its capabilities in order to create new products and services. This will help them drive down production costs over the longer term. Simultaneously, this transformation bringing up by IoT solutions is shifting the way companies contemplate about how they engage their customers, empower their employees and optimize their operations. However, to realize the full potential of IoT, manufacturers need to incorporate the data collected from connected devices with rapidly advancing AI solutions to enable smart machines.

According to Deloitte, enterprises are moving from an era of connected AI to pervasive AI. Continuous advancements in AI software and hardware are giving rise to a multitude of smart devices that can identify and react to sights, sounds, and other patterns, without requiring a persistent connection to the cloud. These smart devices, such as robots, cameras, and medical devices, could effectively unfold greater efficiency and effectiveness for organizations.

Essentially, AI in smart machines currently manages the more traditional repetitive tasks, while advancing very quickly. However, the ability of AI to adapt to incessantly changing tasks will expectedly move quickly into the mainstream. This will bring a paradigm shift from assisted intelligence to full autonomous intelligence where machines will learn to make recommendations that humans can trust.

In recent times, as in one side, the outbreak of COVID-19 is already disrupting everything within manufacturing, it is accelerating the need to leverage AI technologies. The technology is proving itself an effective one capable of screening, tracking and predicting the current and future patients effectively. Now as economies around the world are lifting COVID-19 lockdowns, many companies are embracing artificial intelligence solutions such as big data analysis. This can help monitor social distancing and the use of protective gear, and facilitate contact tracing when a worker testing positive.

Using artificial intelligence can provide predictive maintenance to manufacturers. This will enable the constant monitoring of the performance data and enable predictive analytics. Besides, AI for failure detection also offers automated quality control and demand-driven production, delivering enhanced production outcomes.