AI as Used in Manufacturing

There is an upsurge in more and more manufacturing companies resorting to using

some AI-based technology in their manufacturing. With advantages like higher

throughput, artificial intelligence in manufacturing is nothing short of revolutionary.

That’s not even the end of it with more and more benefits coming in the shape of

predictive maintenance to reduce downtime and verify the quality of product.

Areas You Can Use AI in Manufacturing

The sheer ability of AI is only bottlenecked by technological advancements. But the

pace of technological growth has improved dramatically in the last decade. AI can do a

lot for you. It is for this very reason that AI chip companies have been making a killing

with more and more companies trying out AI in manufacturing.

In your assembly line, you can use AI in the following ways:

Quality Assurance

Manufacturing without a doubt requires impeccable attention to detail. This fact is

magnified even further in more delicate industries like electronics.

Quality assurance has been in the past a manual job with a very highly skilled engineer

checking the quality of all the produce. All the electronics and microprocessors made

have to be up to standard and everything well configured.

AI comes in with image processing algorithms that can automatically validate if an item

is well produced. It is all done in real time with cameras set up in different key points

along the factory floor.

Assembly Line Optimization

A lot goes into a single assembly line and automation of some of these processes

certainly doesn’t hurt. Artificial intelligence in manufacturing is the way to achieve some

level of assembly line automation.

You could start with something as simple as the system activating contingency plans

automatically in the event of equipment failure.

Defect Detection

The artificial intelligence industry really hasn’t taken root well enough to have lots of

assembly lines that can automatically detect defects along the production line. To be

fair, there are some in place although they are not that advanced and require an

engineer for all the coding that needs to be done to differentiate functional and defective

components.

AI and machine learning are often mentioned in the same breath and in this regard,

machine learning allows the assembly line to integrate new information. Without AI,

these systems cannot learn, which can result in tons of false positives, doubling the load

because they have to be manually checked.

Tips to Getting AI in Manufacturing Right

Before dipping your toes into the artificial intelligence industry for all your manufacturing

needs, take note of these very helpful tips:

Know Your Unit Economics

Your unit economics is essentially your revenues and costs in relation to a unit – a unit

that creates value, of course. In this case, the unit is whatever assembly line you have

running on AI for instance.

With that in mind, keep an eye on just how much value you are getting from the unit

compared to how much it costs you.

One way it’s going to cost you is all the cloud services. To be fair, cloud services are

rather cheap – until you start using computing resources, then it gets quite costly. If it's

just storage of data, then cloud services are extremely cheap. Find yourself a cost-

effective solution across different cloud solutions providers and AI chip companies with

regard to your unit economics.

There Is No One Size Fits All

As convenient and handy as it would be, there really is no one size fits all solution in

artificial intelligence and manufacturing. Take time to understand your process and how

everything works then tweak it accordingly with regard to what’s more important and

what’s not.

As a matter of fact, you may end up spending more on an alleged ‘one size fits all’ but

still get a less-than-optimal solution.