Artificial Intelligence and How It Could Transform Manufacturing

The manufacturing world has had a lot of innovative changes in the last two decades, but none are bigger than the advances in artificial intelligence companies are seeing now. Artificial intelligence is defined as “human intelligence exhibited by machines”. When businesses apply it to their systems, it helps optimize their processes and bring on new ideas.

Breakthroughs that improve companies are everywhere in artificial intelligence. Some of the examples of artificial intelligence in companies using it are:

• Speech recognition eliminates the need to type or use a touchscreen.
• Analyze data and information
• Scan and respond to surroundings
• Optimizing processes

This has helped doctors diagnose cancers more effectively, simplify taxi routes in major cities, and make underground pipeline leaks easier to detect. It seems to be improving businesses by cutting out unnecessary labor costs and damage control in every industry. That is, except for manufacturing.

Manufacturing Challenges and Changes

Why does the manufacturing sector fall behind other industries in the adoption of artificial intelligence? While no one can say for sure, Brent Dykes, the director of data strategy at Domo, a software company, believes it has to do with data collection. To really apply artificial intelligence to a company, first, there must be mature analytics to help make decisions.

The global consulting firm, McKinsey, says that only 20-30% of the data and analytics needed have been collected in manufacturing. Since most of this is done by the leading companies in the industry, it doesn’t provide enough information across the board for individual companies.

Despite this information, artificial intelligence does exist in manufacturing. It mostly involves preventative maintenance and automated tasks. Depending on the product, quality control might also be done with artificial intelligence, but even that varies. Using this technology to help collect data and analyze areas that need improvement can only increase the chances that more technology will be used in the future.

With the rate that improvements are made in technology, manufacturing companies are looking at a radical change in the next decade. Once the data shows the best applications for it, the technology will become the new standard, making room for even more improvements in the future.

Learn more about the manufacturing process and services from Clark Rubber & Plastic, a world-class rubber and plastic manufacturer.