Building a Smart Factory with AI and Robotics
Automation transformed 20th-century production lines. Now, a combination of artificial intelligence and robotics is taking automation to the next level: the smart factory.
AI allows businesses to create new production processes and optimize existing methods. Using the right AI software, businesses can make highly customized things — ranging from parts to entire systems — more quickly and at a lower cost, noted Howie Choset, a professor of robotics at the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science.
“I believe the right AI, just like other innovations in manufacturing, will introduce completely new processes, thereby creating the ‘must have’ products of tomorrow that we cannot even conceive of today,” Choset said.
Today’s factories are essentially a series of processes, consisting of materials, tasks, and information flows. For increased productivity and capacity utilization, all of these processes have to run seamlessly and without interruption.
“AI enables various aspects of the operation to do exactly that: predict failures to prevent downtime; do optimal production scheduling based on orders in hand; and generate forecasts, inventory, and delivery times,” explained Jagannath Rao, Siemens’ senior vice president for Internet of Things (IoT) and go-to-market strategy. “[AI also allows manufacturers to] apply sophisticated robots for accuracy and quality and, finally, self-organize logistics for seamless deliveries.”
“AI has left the workbench; it has entered the factory,” Rao declared.
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