DECEMBER - 20218 MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY INSIGHTSArtificial Intelligence to Boost Smart Manufacturing--Myths and RealitiesBy Dr. Athanasios (Thanos) Kontopoulos, Computational & Data Science Scientific Director and Global Lab Leader, Air LiquideThere are many discussions and, let us say it, much buzz about this topic. People in Industry, even more in Manufacturing, are requesting realities beyond the myth. Especially if and how they can boost their business with this technology.Where can we apply it?The applications of AI are numerous. In Air Liquide, we use this framework for our digital transformation strategy: Assets-Customers-Ecosystems (ACE). For the Assets: predictive maintenance, process, and energy optimization, energy management, energy storage, logistics, supply chain, plant design... are some of the fields where AI can push the business forward. However, let us beware of the myth that wants to throw away the "old" technologies such as operations research or computational science and replace it by deep learning. Instead, we combine the best of both worlds. It is feasible, we have already obtained results and we are part of a cross-enterprises collaborative project that will push this "hybridization" frontier forward..For the Customers: recommender systems, customer analytics, pricing, churn, demand forecasting, building new types of contracts are just some of the applications where AI can incredibly help us to make better decisions or automate processes and improve the Customer experience. We have obtained very positive results with AI in most of those fields.Nonetheless: can everything be forecasted thanks to AI? Our experience shows that we can have successes, for instance, in demand forecasting, but some phenomena are either too complex or we lack information (data) to be able to predict them. So expectations need to be set at the right level, according to the case. Let us now deal with Ecosystems (how employees interact internally/externally). Chatbots and robot process automation are typical applications where AI makes a difference to accelerate processes and improve the Employee experience. And here we have many positive results. For instance, we obtained pretty good employees adoption with a chatbot to onboard new hires.Humans and machines - some more myths and realitiesLet us now see the strengths of humans and machines-AI in various fields, also beyond manufacturing.If you seek purpose, when you need to put things into context and use common sense, do not go and ask an AI system. E.g. when you're building a strategy, AI can help you to some extent but no more. It is your call.When working on innovation and needing creativity, AI can be of service (e.g. in the discovery of drugs, new materials,..) but do not expect the next "big thing" in your business to happen by pushing on an AI button. You're in the driver's seat.Thanks to the ability to put things into context and Dr. Athanasios (Thanos) KontopoulosIN MY OPINIONIN MY OPINIONIN MY OPINIONIN MY OPINIONIN MY OPINIONIN MY OPINIONIN MY OPINIONIN MY OPINION
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