Manufacturing is a rapidly evolving world.
You spend months familiarizing yourself with a technology, only to learn you have a new one coming up (or in many cases, has already entered your competitor’s shop floor!).
In situations like these, you often find yourself grappling with challenges like efficiency, productivity, profitability, competition, and innovation.
Modern manufacturing differs from its conventional counterpart in several ways.
Hence, no matter how tech-driven your methodologies, you need something more advanced, quicker, and more personalized to stay relevant and accomplish your goals.
This is precisely where AI and automation enter the scene.
From predictive maintenance to optimizing routine operations and building strategic advantages, AI and automation encompass a much broader spectrum, helping manufacturers operate and innovate more efficiently.
No wonder AI’s global market size in manufacturing alone is projected to reach nearly USD 700 billion during the initial years of the upcoming decade.
But how are AI and automation driving the seismic shifts across the manufacturing world?
That’s an interesting question and the answer to it is even more intriguing. Let’s find out.
Contemporary Challenges of Manufacturers
Primitively, manufacturing challenges often revolved around manual errors or fundamental production bottlenecks. However, in the 21st century, these problems have morphed into even more complex challenges, complicating survival and progress.
So, before we explore the role of AI and automation in the manufacturing context, let’s look at some of the most common concerns manufacturers grapple with these days.
- Lack of Real-Time Visibility
Operating without real-time visibility into operational, strategic, and commercial aspects is like steering a ship in a dense fog. In situations like these, manufacturers cannot make out if they are on the right track, diverting them from their trajectory.
- Reactive Maintenance
Unexpected equipment breakdowns and downtimes often cost millions and a loss of precious production time. Let alone reputation! However, most manufacturers still rely on reactive maintenance.
- Inventory Inefficiencies
Overstocking blocks capital and wastes space, while understocking leads to missed opportunities! This happens when companies do not have live insights into their inventory. Balancing stocks becomes a perpetual pain!
- Inaccurate Forecasting
Predicting demand and planning operations and resources accordingly is like crystal-ball gazing. It leads to impulsive decisions that often end up in overproduction, shortages, delays, and monetary losses. You need analytical insights that aid informed forecasts.
- Labor Shortages and Talent Scarcities
The workforce landscape also keeps changing with emerging technologies and situations. Challenging to find skilled individuals and upskilling existing ones can eventually lead to the ditch called incompetence, gradually making a company redundant.
- Product Quality Inconsistencies
Even the most stringent checks aren’t fully devoid of human errors! Manual mistakes can result in inconsistent product quality, culminating in consignment-level rejections and colossal reputational, commercial, and strategic losses.
Navigating these challenges can be complex, particularly for manufacturers who still rely on ancient technologies and approaches. But AI and automation help them address them, driving measurable operational, and strategic impact. Let’s see how.
7 Ways AI and Automation Revolutionize Manufacturing
Here are eight ways through which AI and automation help manufacturing companies, particularly those from precision-driven sectors like wiring and cabling production.
- Predictive Maintenance
Earlier, most manufacturers waited for a machine to break down. However, in today’s age, equipment failures can lead to costly production halts, draining profits and precious time!
For example, wiring manufacturers, whether bulk producers or product-based, cannot afford to see their machines sitting idle beyond a point. Such situations demand embracing a predictive maintenance approach, which is precisely what AI offers.
AI-powered sensors can predict failures before they happen.
Accordingly, many global wiring manufacturers use ML algorithms to monitor motor performance. It helps them minimize downtime, avoid costly production delays, and ensure their production assemblies are up and running at all times.
- Computer Vision-Powered Quality Control
Relying on human eyes for quality control is history. The slightest error or oversight can translate into massive losses, expensive rework, and loss of competitive edge.
AI-driven vision systems detect minute defects. For example, it can identify and flag tiny errors in wiring insulation or diameter inconsistencies with phenomenal accuracy.
Many wiring manufacturers worldwide use automated inspection mechanisms to identify defective pieces, improve product quality, and reduce waste.
- Process Optimization
The intricate nature of the manufacturing process often makes it challenging for humans to analyze multiple variables. But AI can do it by analyzing thousands of variables, for example from temperature to tension and pressure. It helps manufacturers synchronize their operations and maintain optimal conditions across various production stages.
For instance, the use of AI in wiring plants to dynamically align machine settings for diverse cable grades has become pretty common these days.
- Inventory and Supply Chain Management
Manufacturing companies that produce a diverse range of products often struggle with managing inventory. Most of them rely on traditional ERPs that succumb to modern pressures and requirements beyond a particular point, making inventory management even more challenging. AI tools help forecast demand, track raw material use, and suggest alternate suppliers, particularly in the case of delays or a volatile environment.
For example, it can help cabling manufacturers prepare for copper and PVC pricing changes to buy raw materials in time and stay adequately stocked.
- Robotics and Cobots
Automation doesn’t replace humans but amplifies their capabilities. So, how about merging human capabilities with machine precision? That’s the collaborative approach and magic that cobots help work out. Cobots work alongside humans, enabling them to handle repetitive or potentially dangerous tasks – for instance, coating cables or spooling wires. So, humans can consider them as a new tech-driven colleague, helping them do what they do more efficiently!
- Customized Production
While manufacturers can still pull off generic manufacturing, they face challenges fulfilling small-batch customized cables. But AI helps them do it efficiently. It enables them to streamline tool changes, reconfigurations, and scheduling, minimizing the lead time.
- Informed Decision-Making
AI constantly collects and analyzes data to make informed decisions quickly. So, whether it is about planning capacity, pricing, or scheduling production stages, AI helps analyze data and enable more accurate and efficient decision-making.
Making Manufacturing More Efficient with AI – Are You Game for the Change?
AI isn’t the future of manufacturing but already happening. As it continues to evolve rapidly, what matters to manufacturers, including manufacturers of wires and cables, is how quickly they respond to the changes and integrate them to keep up with the evolution. These abilities will play an instrumental role, helping manufacturers stay tuned to changing consumer demands and the business landscape.
As one of India’s leading wiring manufacturers, Vidya Wires stays aligned with changes around, including those concerning technologies like AI and automation. We boast a robust setup, integrated with cutting-edge AI-driven capabilities that help us deliver more, quicker, and better. Want to explore more? Email us at inquiry@vidyawire.com.