By combining the human potential with AI, manufacturers can drive business value and transformation at scale. However, many manufacturers cannot get started with AI and ML and leverage their full potential despite the massive opportunity these technologies offer.
Some of the significant challenges that the manufacturing organizations face today are vague vision/roadmap, manually intensive processes, poor data quality, out-of-date operational visibility, reactive maintenance, unplanned down time, and a skills gap.
“We interviewed more than 500 CEOs worldwide, and 86% of the CEOs have said that AI is essential to their company’s success. And what’s interesting is, only 30 of them have been able to scale AI and other emerging technologies to drive business value at scale truly. Around 400 are lagging and stuck in the world of pilot purgatory, which is a term we continue to hear when you talk about AI and other emerging technologies,” said Sachin Lulla, Global Digital Strategy and Transformation Leader EY.
A value creation roadmap is essential.
Data quality is the key to AI success and cannot be an afterthought. The organizations on their AI journey need to start with the end in mind. They need to ensure that they know the business case to define why and have a clear roadmap for value creation.
"Manufacturers have been collecting data for an extended period. But the challenge when transitioning to new technologies and leveraging it and things like artificial intelligence, machine learning is accessing that information. It's really about meeting individual customer needs at scale," said Michael Gardiner, Manufacturing Industry, Microsoft Canada.
The acute shortage of qualified in-house talent and lack of access to the right technology and tools to execute AI strategy are considered top impediments for organizations in achieving their transformational goals.
Most companies are scrambling to get the skilled resources that can deliver the AI capabilities from scratch. It is essential to put people at the center of AI transformation journeys.
Microsoft looks at AI-enabled IoT implementations not just from a customer perspective but from a security perspective. Through Azure IoT, Microsoft helps to connect assets and machines quickly at massive scale, but critically with utmost concern for security from the device all the way to the cloud.
"We're doing a lot in this space with our partners, such as Canvass AI. We help build the platform, but they're building the solutions. They have the domain experience of applying AI to things like industrial operations and so forth and we try and help make that possible," Gardiner added.
Transforming organizations through no-code AI
Providing thorough training to AI subject matter experts is an expensive and lengthy process. Not all organizations have the immediate budgets, time, and ways to establish suitable training modules. That's where the advantage of no-code AI platforms can bring tremendous value to the manufacturers, giving them a great head start for their AI projects.
"That's really where we have built the Canvass AI platform, which is a purpose-built software platform, sitting in the Microsoft Azure cloud and leveraging all of the critical capabilities that Microsoft offers and enabling and empowering the manufacturing sector. It's a unified AI platform because it's purpose-built to empower the process engineers on the plant floor, the reliability engineers, the maintenance guys, and people with the data," said Humera Malik, Founder & CEO, Canvass AI
AI and machine learning can help organizations save thousands of dollars every week. However, organizations cannot accomplish the desired impact overnight, and they must first start to understand what's going on in their process.
The plug-and-play no-code Canvass AI platform enables manufacturers to augment their workforce through AI and support the industrials' needs, helping their digitized workforce quickly learn and leverage the power of data.
The quotes of the experts featured in the article have been taken from a recent Canvass AI-sponsored IIoT virtual event titled, Transform your operations with the power of AI in 60 days.
