AI-The Road Ahead for Manufacturing

 

AI-THE ROAD AHEAD FOR MANUFACTURING

INTRODUCTION

Artificial Intelligence is being productively used and is slowly impending into the manufacturing industry as the : Data driven discovery and analysis in Manufacturing sector can increase knowledge and efficiency as well as challenge the social values related to privacy and the monetization of personal information.

AI in manufacturing facilitates to conquer many internal challenges that have been around in the industry from expertise shortage to complexity in decision making, issues related to integration, and overloaded information. Making use of AI in manufacturing plants enables businesses to completely transform their proceedings.

AI in Manufacturing Industry

AI alone is not enough to build all in manufacturing industry. AI automatically gets combined with ML (Machine Learning), IoT (Internet of Things) which in turn can lead to a massive change in the Manufacturing industry.

For instance, the foremost thing that we are all looking forward is Selfless-Driving Cars.

Well, talking about selfless driving cars we do come across many theories as in how can it be enhanced to reduce the risk of accidents and in case of decision making.  An interesting yet unique research by a team of engineers from ULL(University of La Laguna) say that the self-steering cars can sense the road using a unique technique called as Ant Colony Optimization(ACO).

According to Rafael Arnay (Author of ULL) the ants leave a stream of pheromones as they move ahead which can be smelled and detected by the fellow members. These pheromones evaporate over the time meaning the path used by ants that move to and from the food source over the shortest distance is the most deeply reinforced by these chemical substances and so is the one chosen by the other ants.

“The ACO technique is based, similarly, on a colony of artificial ants, in other words computational agents that work cooperatively and communicate with each other by means of artificial pheromone trails,” explains Arnay.

If this technique gets adapted then we would be in a world where the need for driver will not be needed. 

Manufacturing sector goes beyond all this. It looks into another aspect that is known as Digital Twin

Digital Twin concept is different yet an interesting one. Digital Twin is the concept where in you put in your idea or physical asset with the AI to get a better insight of the machines or equipment using sensors. To make a digital twin of any physical asset we need a collective information about the physical asset, the manufacturing data, and the analytic data, which is then combined with the AI algorithm to get a better insight of the physical asset.

Thus with the consistent flow of the data the digital twin will give us a live model of the physical asset or equipment we want.

CONCLUSION

AI is going to be a big disrupter in the Manufacturing Industries into the future by bringing in efficiency and cutting down costs and achieving huge economies of scale.

Artificial Intelligence is not about how any of the leading sectors like manufacturing, Healthcare, Retail or Automobile can be simplified, it is about how efficient each sector can get and how each of these sectors can grow in the coming future. AI adds values to each of the data provided to its algorithm to ensure that the future unfolds for a better living. 

About the Author

Meghana Menon

Bangalore, India

Lead Developer @ Netlabs Global Private Limited