Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more and more popular and is empowering a lot of businesses with advanced technological tools. In the engineering industry, AI is building closer relationships between customers and suppliers, with a focus on transparency and mutual exchange.
By leveraging AI, many opportunities are opening up for both producers and suppliers. They can optimize maintenance and refine processes, increase productivity and sustainability, and improving safety. What is more, by using collaborative robots, companies can enhance their automation capabilities, increase productivity, and cut costs.
“I predict that, because of artificial intelligence and its ability to automate certain tasks that in the past were impossible to automate, not only will we have a much wealthier civilization, but the quality of work will go up very significantly and a higher fraction of people will have callings and careers relative to today.” ~Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.
Industrial businesses interested in developing and leveraging AI technologies are required to shift their traditional approaches and strategies and start working a new way.
“We have to be much more open to the market,” reveals Petra Sundström, Head of Digital Business Development at Sandvik. “It’s no longer possible to have the development process shrouded in secrecy. We must start talking about challenges, not just about solutions, if only because that’s the way we can attract the skills that we’ll be depending on going forward.”
In the mining industry, the motivation for taking full advantage of AI’s transformative potential is palpable: “For a start, it’s obvious that a whole lot of money can be saved. It’s a basic necessity to be able to prevent unexpected stoppages in above-ground processes, which, if they happen, can cause costs running into millions for every hour that passes.”
AI can also support companies in performing specific analysis of multiple stages of the production process and optimize it accordingly.
“Higher efficiency means better productivity, of course, but at the same time, there is an important sustainability side to this. Increased efficiency enables us to save on resources, such as electricity and water, which is an extremely important goal to aim at,” continued Petra.
Developing agile working methods with AI also implies providing customers reliable and in-depth information on how specific operations could perform more efficiently and how they could optimize their machines.
“This, too, requires a certain adjustment on our part,” acknowledges Sundström. “Instead of delivering pure figures into customer systems, we undertake to contribute more directly to their productivity. This means closer collaboration and greater responsibility, which may be felt to be a big step to take. But it’s the right way to go.”
Implementing an agile development model also supports organizations in creating strong long-term business relationships.
“You can look at it this way, that the solution we are selling is like a small snowball that we go on rolling so it gets bigger and bigger. And the customer has to be with us and at least show us the direction. Image-based technology may become an attractive line of development in AI in the future. A specially designed, high-technology camera may be a highly useful type of sensor,” revealed Sundström. “Image recognition is a fast-growing sector right now. Combined with machine learning, this may find applications all the way from personal safety to flow optimization.”
From automation and robotics to better collaboration with customers, AI has a wide range of use cases in the engineering industry. Some skepticism has been spread around that AI are taking our jobs and Petra has dispelled all of it: “Admittedly, some jobs will disappear, but new ones will be created, and the shift will be gradual. This development will open up an infinite number of opportunities in most areas of society. At the same time, it’s important to be aware that AI has many different sides to it. It isn’t a single solution but rather an umbrella concept that embraces a series of different applications.”
