Janifha Evangeline
Alike automation which was responsible for revolutionizing the manufacturing line of the twentieth century, Artificial Intelligence is taking manufacturing industry to the next level, which is the Smart Manufacturing era. Smart manufacturing comprises Internet of Things, sensors, robotics, machine-to-machine communication and the likes.

These technologies in isolation and without the application of intelligence can do nothing for making manufacturing smarter. For instance robots can only perform as much as they are programmed to do; sensors can generate humongous amount of data. What these systems require is an intelligent system which can process the huge volumes of data that is generated in the Smart manufacturing network, the ability to innovate faster, render factories optimized processes, improved business decisions, higher capacity utilization as well as productivity.

Today’s smart Factories are a network of processes comprising information as well as task flows with the way automation is being leveraged in manufacturing. All these processes should be running in parallel seamlessly without any other tasks or processes interrupting them from evolving as a smart manufacturing unit.

Benefits that Artificial Intelligence is bringing to smart manufacturing

Artificial Intelligence comprises the capabilities of learning systems which are regarded/perceived as intelligent by humans. Artificial Intelligence & ML technologies are the top priorities in the manufacturing industry as they help organizations in altering several business models, discover operational paradigms for supporting those models, & most importantly, monetize information to achieve higher levels of productivity.

Artificial Intelligence works as it accumulates considerable benefits for the manufacturing industry, which include enabling smart production, developing predictive as well as preventative maintenance, providing supply chain optimization, improved safety, product development as well as optimization, facilitating Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality, reducing cost, quality assurance as well as enabling green operations etc.

Artificial Intelligence enablement is most commonly used by manufacturing sectors for increasing the efficiency as well as yield of the
equipment. Artificial Intelligence is also being leveraged normally as a tool for improving productivity, improving quality as well as consistency which helps in forecasting the results accurately.

It is safe to say that the manufacturing industry continues to be driven by AI and Ml technologies. The critical use case of Artificial Intelligence in changing operations, enhancing the overall product quality as well as decreasing costs via several methods that include smart operation, design prediction, quality assessment of products etc.

Reasons why Adoption of Artificial Intelligence in manufacturing is accelerating

There are few merits that make the adoption of Artificial Intelligence specifically suitable as launching pads for manufacturers for embarking on their journey with cognitive computing– intelligent maintenance, intelligent demand planning & forecasting as well as product quality control.

Although the deployment of Artificial Intelligence is a complex process with many facets of digitization, it has still not stopped from moving forward. The ability to grow as well as sustaining the Artificial Intelligence initiative in a manner that produces huge value for the organization is most likely to be crucial for achieving early milestones on an Artificial Intelligence adoption journey.

Manufacturing enterprises are adopting Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning with such speed since by leveraging these cognitive computing technologies, companies can actually leverage their analytics capabilities, in order to make better forecasts & reduce the inventory costs. Improved/enhanced analytics capabilities facilitate organizations to shift to predictive maintenance, decreasing maintenance costs & downtime.

How important is predictive maintenance in manufacturing

The use of Artificial Intelligence facilitates manufacturers in predicting when or if functional equipment as well as repairs can be scheduled in advance. It is highly critical since machines can operate even more efficiently as well as cost-efficiently when AI-powered predictive maintenance is implemented. What makes Artificial Intelligence excellent for maintaining reliable equipment & maintaining smooth production is its ability of predicting breakdowns as well as optimize scheduling before the equipment fails.

We observe that scaling Artificial Intelligence implementations beyond a POC level is one of the major challenges that manufacturing as well as several other industries such as logistics, healthcare, insurance, finance & audit face.

How can digital twins revolutionize the manufacturing industry

Digital twins can be leveraged in several ways for improving manufacturing operations as well as enabling engineering, production, sales & marketing in order to work together by utilizing the same data, for making better decisions.

The digital twin helps in changing the manufacturing process as part of quality management for identifying variances in all parts of the process coupled with the use of better materials as well processes. For instance, supply chains, fleet managers as well as route efficiency are measured using digital twins. A digital twin displays several variances in either the equipment or the manufacturing processes which indicate the requirement for maintenance prior to something big happens. In fact, the ease of access to operational data via digital twins enables collaboration, better communication along with faster decision-making.

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