Any company working in the manufacturing industry is likely to know that AI has been making significant improvements with a range of applications.
From using it to determine when machines need servicing, to enforcing quality control on products; there are a wide variety of uses for artificial intelligence across the board.
Using AI in manufacturing industry settings is undoubtedly beneficial, but what exactly does this mean for the future? And how does that apply to your business? Let’s delve a little deeper into the facts.
AI in the manufacturing industry – The past
To gain a better understanding of how things could potentially be moving forward with artificial intelligence in manufacturing, let’s first consider where it all began.
Looking into the history, you’ll find that it wasn’t too long ago that humans began implementing artificial intelligence in business. Innovation in AI grew significantly during the 1960s and the first industrial robot, Unimate, worked on a general assembly line during this decade. Even then, humans had been developing AI as early as 300 years ago.
While the industry and usage of AI has certainly changed and evolved since then, seeing where it began is quite interesting and worth noting when looking to the future.
AI in the manufacturing industry – Where are we now?
Of course, our usage of artificial intelligence in modern-day manufacturing is an important consideration too, if only to understand how it has evolved over the last 60 years and the situation we find ourselves in now.
The manufacturing industry itself has certainly been revolutionised by the progression of AI and how companies can use it. From helping to predict potential issues in a product, to price forecasting, efficiency in managing inventory and much more, the benefits are seemingly endless.
A large portion of the industry already uses AI, with the majority of senior executives in the field believing that it plays a crucial role in their organization’s overall efficiency. When you consider how it has evolved in just the past few years, it’s clear to see why so many businesses are keen to get involved, so it’s worth taking the future potential of AI into account, too. As it continues to change and improve, there’s no doubt that it will become even more of a necessity.
AI in the manufacturing industry – The future
While it’s impossible to predict how artificial intelligence will evolve and how it will impact manufacturing businesses of the future, we can certainly try to look ahead.
There are several things that we can do if we want to learn more about the future of AI and its capabilities in the industry. For example, looking at the Manufacturing MadeSmarter Challenge, we can see that there are already goals to improve productivity in businesses across the UK to deal with common issues that could be solved with AI software.
As technology is developed to combat new challenges, artificial intelligence will continue to improve the manufacturing sector, and many more niches besides, and that’s certainly an attractive notion.
Seeing how much it has impacted manufacturing processes and companies as a whole, especially in more recent years with the significant growth in AI technology, it’s interesting to speculate where things will be in even just a few years.
Make the most of AI now
Regardless of what the future brings, it‘s well worth thinking about how the technology available today could be implemented within your own business.
If you’re not using any artificial technology at all (or at least use it for small purposes), consider the different ways that it could benefit your daily processes. With more than half of businesses in the industry making use of AI in a wide variety of ways, there are likely to be a few things that artificial intelligence could do for you.
From cost-effectiveness, to efficiency; it has the potential to enhance several aspects of a business in this sector – and if you want to take advantage of the future advancements, it might be worthwhile making a start now.
