Applications of AI in Manufacturing

It's been a while since AI has found its importance in the manufacturing sector. AI in manufacturing has a lot to explore as it uses technology to automate manual and complex tasks which earlier were time taking and required lots of effort. Artificial Intelligence in the manufacturing sector also helps in developing efficient and systematic processes. Until now, the manufacturing sector was facing issues in managing the inventory which AI has successfully marked and resolved. Also, the day-by-day increasing demands of the consumers require a good boost in manufacturing and production rate, and AI really helps in meeting the ever-growing demands of the consumers and delivering what the end customer really needs.

Talking about the numbers, as of now, more than 60% of manufacturing companies are already using AI technology to revamp their manufacturing processes. Most companies and enterprises have now understood the benefit of the implementation of AI technology in the manufacturing sector. The reason that the technology received a warm welcome from the businessmen and industry owners is its capability to improve the quality of the end products and the efficiency at work. Also, the technology is being widely used in the sector to avoid sudden damages to machinery, as AI-powered solutions can determine and predict equipment failure before they are actually damaged.

Also, artificial intelligence has played a great role in manufacturing high-quality products and delivering them to the market in the required time. Thus, AI in manufacturing not only enhances the quality of the product but also ensures profits. In this post below, we have provided a list of applications of AI in manufacturing. We assure you that by going through all the use cases and applications given below you will get to know how AI is supporting the manufacturing sector at its best.

*## Use Cases and Applications of AI in the Manufacturing Sector *

1. Artificial Intelligence Improves Logistics & Supply Chain Management

Accurate Inventory Management: AI helps logistic companies with accurate inventory management to ensure that the in and outflow of items of a warehouse is correct. Using traditional methods, inventory-related activities like packing, picking, and processing orders can consume a lot of time and effort, and dealing with such activities manually can increase the risk of errors. Thus AI-driven tools are nowadays used by logistic companies which have proven to be highly effective in inventory management. These tools are not only capable of handling mass data but can quickly analyze and interpret huge datasets which ultimately saves time and money. Many businesses use these tools in facilitating data entry solutions.

Warehouse Management and Enhanced Safety: AI-based automated tools help logistic companies with efficient warehouse management along with smarter planning, which ultimately enhances the material and safety of workers. Besides this, AI tools also analyze the safety of the workplace as it automatically informs manufacturers whenever there is a related risk.

On-time Delivery: AI tools make the entire supply chain management process smarter, safer, and faster by reducing dependency on the manual workforce. This ultimately leads to timed deliveries which were committed to the customers at the time they order the products.

2. Artificial Intelligence Helps With Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance is one of the crucial applications of AI that the technology has offered to the manufacturing industry. In industries and factories, there are higher chances of equipment getting frequently damaged and collapsing as they work continuously for several hours. Such a situation can impact productivity and efficiency at work as the production lines can get delayed. This could even surge the production cost for the industries which can lower the profits on the sales. Talking about the figures, at large factories even a small downtime can cost as much as $20,000. On the other hand, determining the faults in the machine with humans by conducting regular tests and diagnosis is certainly very expensive. Therefore, AI-powered solutions are the best bet here.

AI-powered solutions help in analyzing the performance of the machines and equipment in the past, effectively and efficiently. Analyzing the historical performance of the machines using AI-powered solutions provides visibility into the health of the machine and helps in predicting when the equipment of the machines will require services and machines and when they can actually damage or collapse. This certainly provides enough time to the dedicated employees to plan out when they can work on fixing the device. This will avoid situations where machines can abruptly come to halt in the middle of the production process

3. AI Helps in Inspecting Product Quality

One of the other important use cases that AI has in the manufacturing industry is that it helps in inspecting the quality of the products that are manufactured in the factories and the plants. Nowadays many factories and plants owners have started using AI-Powered solutions to ensure that the end product that has been manufactured by the particular unit is of high quality and meets the required set of quality standards. AI-enabled tools and software provide visual inspection which helps in determining the quality of the end product. The process is less time-consuming and effort-taking in comparison to the task that human employees need to perform in order to examine all products manually and determine their quality. AI technologies integrated with Cameras, computer vision, etc helps in detecting flaws at the earlier manufacturing stages this gives engineers time to work on the machines and makes them more stable and efficient to manufacture good quality products without any delay.

4. AI Helps With Generative Design

AI technology majorly supports the generative design program, that combines with AI technology to provide a solution that can take the place of a human engineer to design products in the manufacturing sector. Whenever an engineer wants to design the products using the generative design program, he/she can just feed the various design parameters of the product including material, size, etc and the technology uses the generative design algorithms to produce different designs out of which the engineer can choose the best one.

By using this method manufacturers and engineers will have the flexibility to build hundreds and thousands of designs for one single product and can then decide which suits the best for that particular product or item. The reason that AI has found its importance in the generative design program is that it is almost impossible for human designers or engineers to come up with multiple designs for a single product as it is both a time and effort-consuming activity. But generative design programs with the support of AI can do it efficiently and at a lower price.

After the designs are created using the generative design program, the engineer or the designer can then test the designs further with machine learning to figure out which design can be the best option for the product. Engineers in such cases consider the designs recommended by the AI and then out of those options they finalize the designs that they need to send to the development process to implement the finalized design in order to build the product.

5. AI Helps With Price Forecasts & Predicting Demand

Price Forecast

If you are in the manufacturing sector, you might know that in order to manufacture a product, the manufacturer needs to purchase and stock the required resources and the prices of these resources vary from time to time. Suppose you are planning to manufacture a product that needs a good inventory of Iron, then you need to purchase the complete stock in advance. The price of the Iron can vary depending upon numerous factors including Metal Exchange listings. As prices of the resources required for the manufacturing process change frequently, therefore, it is crucial to purchase the resources when they are at their cheapest possible prices.

Besides this, getting to know about the resources of the price in detail is extremely important for the manufacturers to determine the estimated price of the end product they are manufacturing. AI is very helpful in such scenarios as they help the manufacturing companies in determining when is the best time for them to purchase and stock a specific resource. AI uses the latest and innovative algorithms to analyze and predict the prices of the resources based on the historical data in the given time period.
By using AI technology in the manufacturing sector, the manufacturing companies can get the opportunity to stock the required resources at the correct time. With such an opportunity, the companies can earn more profits by selling the end product to the required audience as the production cost of the product will be comparatively low.

Predicting Demand

One of the other applications that AI has in the manufacturing sector is predicting the demand of the products in the market that are being manufactured by the companies and factories. AI in the manufacturing sector helps in analyzing the behavior patterns, purchasing power, and category of the customers to determine which products will see more sales figures in a particular location. Such crucial data helps the manufacturing companies to focus more on the products that will be in demand in the market and manufacturing keeping such products in stock makes them earn good profit and see good sales figures.

6. AI Supports Robotics

It is true that robotics is widely used in the manufacturing sector as various types of manufacturing jobs and activities are performed using the technology. But only robotics is not enough to keep up with the market demands and produce quality products at a cost-efficient price. Therefore robotics has now been integrated with AI in the manufacturing sector to improve the efficiency and operations procedure at the industries and factories. With AI-powered robots, there is no need to program the robots anymore for their movements and processes to carry out jobs and activities in the workspace. Also, the manufacturing process with AI-powered robots can have minimal intervention of human beings as robots can manufacture products following the standard procedures and movements without being programmed by professionals or engineers.

7. AI Supports & Improves Customer Service

Customer service has always been an important part of the solutions that the company provides to its consumers be it from retail, hospitality, banking, or manufacturing industry. Customer service has not been given much importance in the manufacturing industry since the beginning and this is the reason that many industries and factories face huge losses as they lose command over their customers in no time. It is true that the manufacturing sector does not deal with end consumers directly, but still, customer service is equally important. AI is definitely a good opportunity to improve the customer service offered by manufacturing firms.

AI in retail industry are capable of analyzing customers behaviors and identifying patterns to provide accurate predictions with respect to future outcomes. AI analyzing the customer behavior and patterns helps the companies and factories to better understand the needs of their customers. Besides this, AI-powered tools and software allow the manufacturers to quickly identify issues and prioritize improvements. Therefore, AI is really helpful in improving customer service.

## Conclusion:

It is true that AI has benefitted the manufacturing sector for the numerous applications that it has in improving the quality of the product and making the entire manufacturing process easy and efficient. Manufacturing companies have understood the importance of AI technology in the production and operation process and with the technology getting cheaper with time it has become more accessible for companies and businesses. Since its inception, the manufacturing sector has always welcomed new technologies to make things easy, but adopting AI has proven to be a game-changer for manufacturing companies and factories. With AI, the manufacturing companies have not only been able to increase production and improve the quality of the products but have even been able to make data-driven decisions, minimize operational costs, and improve the way they serve their customers.

Author Bio:

I am a content strategist at SunTec.AI with over 6 years of experience in the sphere of Digital Marketing content development.

SunTec.AI is an experienced data annotation company that offers premium data annotation and image annotation services across diverse industry verticals. We create customized business-specific solutions for advanced domains, like AI & ML, robotics, healthcare, and technology.