by Angela Guess
Louis Columbus recently wrote in Forbes, “Machine learning’s core technologies align well with the complex problems manufacturers face daily. From striving to keep supply chains operating efficiently to producing customized, built- to-order products on time, machine learning algorithms have the potential to bring greater predictive accuracy to every phase of production. Many of the algorithms being developed are iterative, designed to learn continually and seek optimized outcomes. These algorithms iterate in milliseconds, enabling manufacturers to seek optimized outcomes in minutes versus months. The ten ways machine learning is revolutionizing manufacturing include the following.”
Columbus’s list begins, “Increasing production capacity up to 20% while lowering material consumption rates by 4%. Smart manufacturing systems designed to capitalize on predictive data analytics and machine learning have the potential to improve yield rates at the machine, production cell, and plant levels. The following graphic from General Electric and cited in a National Institute of Standards (NIST) provides a summary of benefits that are being gained using predictive analytics and machine learning in manufacturing today.”
He goes on, “Providing more relevant data so finance, operations, and supply chain teams can better manage factory and demand-side constraints. In many manufacturing companies, IT systems aren’t integrated, which makes it difficult for cross-functional teams to accomplish shared goals. Machine learning has the potential to bring an entirely new level of insight and intelligence into these teams, making their goals of optimizing production workflows, inventory, Work In Process (WIP), and value chain decisions possible.”
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