In the context of industrial companies, AI has a lot of potential and is often even seen as a savior to achieve a significant increase in added value. However, projects cannot always be implemented smoothly. A picture of the mood in the company.
When people talk about artificial intelligence (AI) in companies, they usually mean machine learning (ML). With ML, machines learn from experience – and develop an algorithm from it. This in turn helps in industry, for example, to optimize processes. Reason enough for companies to regard artificial intelligence as the “holy grail” of increasing efficiency and quality and using it to increase competitiveness.
But the past has shown that due to the lack of specialist knowledge, entry still raises too many questions for many players and implementation is accompanied by numerous obstacles.
A current survey shows important empirical values from industrial companies that have already successfully implemented AI. More than half of those surveyed (58 percent) state that they already use AI in their production – 31 percent even across the board, 27 percent at least partially. However, the survey also shows that companies are at different stages with regard to the use of AI. At the same time, however, respondents are certain that the use of AI will be used more and more throughout the entire production process in the near future. On the other hand, it is a hindrance that it is often difficult to program certain functions or to create AI models and then to use them in practice on the machines.
That is why many of the companies are starting to use AI partially in the first step and initially program the solutions for very specific specifications in smaller projects. However, this harbors the risk that the planning of these projects will also be implemented in small parts and in silos. It is therefore best if AI is used in an overarching strategy and not in individual, unrelated pilot projects. However, companies have to feel their way around every new technology; there will be errors at first. This is also underlined by the participants in the survey, who have been using AI for five years: Almost half of those surveyed (47 percent) would approach their AI project differently with today’s knowledge. On the other hand, 34 percent state that they would do at least some things differently. And 13 percent would do everything differently.
However, an overarching strategy is only one aspect. With a complete restart with the knowledge from the last five years, companies would plan the introduction better and involve the employees more in all processes from the beginning. This should in turn make it possible to include the various teams at an early stage and thus build trust in the technology. In addition, the contact would take away the widespread fear among employees that robots will completely take over human tasks. On the contrary: Experience shows that people in industry can benefit from artificial intelligence and automation. The machines focus primarily on easy tasks that relieve employees – for example tasks with a repetitive character or tasks based on an increased amount of data. AI can process these tasks faster than a human.