Micheal Cassidy
CTO, Irish Manufacturing Research
The rapidly increasing ability of generative AI tools is creating huge interest in their potential in the data-rich environments of manufacturing and supply chains.
While there is a lot of aspiration for generative AI use in shopfloor and operational applications, the technology is likely going to have the earliest impact in providing productivity in customer and supply chain engagement. It can deliver streamlined and automated solutions for quotes, order preparation, inventory management and bespoke documentation, which supports customised production.
Generative AI allows the exploitation of knowledge stores
The technology will support the cataloguing of service knowledge and provide conversational interaction with customers. Within industry, tools will provide insights from the plethora of reports, PowerPoints and assorted documents that constitute a vast wealth of static organisational knowledge.
Irish Manufacturing Research (IMR) researchers have started to deploy generative AI tools to interact with machine data and complex outputs from other data analytics tools. This will support more intuitive and conversational reporting at both shopfloor and management levels.
There are concerns over privacy and security
and the lack of skills to deploy and
effectively use the technology.
It will, in time, significantly increase the actionable insights that can be developed from manufacturing data sources that are largely underutilised in most factories. IMR research has also deployed generative AI to develop synthetic data for training other AI models in flexible automation challenges.
However, there are significant challenges to making the technology useful for industry, foremost of which are risks of misinformation — many generative AI tools are prone to creating fictitious outputs. There are concerns over privacy and security and the lack of skills to deploy and effectively use the technology.
The digital skills gap is significant
According to a recent KPMG survey of US manufacturers, many companies intend to develop and deploy their own solutions, yet most lack the skills to do so. Developing foundational AI knowledge across organisations as well as specific expertise will be critical for industrial competitiveness in Ireland.
Within global supply chains, in which Irish industry is hugely interconnected, generative AI holds significant promise for developing greater value for participants and for supporting an evolution to circular economic models. Coupled with smart products and Digital Product Passports, generative AI can help in telling the history of a product, aiding full lifecycle support, remanufacturing and second-life uses. IMR, in collaboration with Irish industry, leads research to develop and deploy the building blocks of this sustainable manufacturing future.