Microsoft in Action at Hannover Messe
Gen AI (generative artificial intelligence) is here for many industries. In fact, 80% of manufacturing customers are considering using gen AI in their manufacturing operations and in their business processes—and it will fundamentally transform the factory floor and change how frontline workers interact with data.
Certainly, this will be a point of conversation at Hannover Messe, which is scheduled to take place March 31-April 4. At the event, more than 4,000 companies will attend, with roughly 130,000 attendees, 1,600 speakers, and some 300 startups are anticipated to walk the long aisles from roughly 150 countries—all ready to tackle the heavy topic of what is next for manufacturing. Technology—and gen AI—will take center stage at the event next week.
Adam Bogobowicz, senior director, global industrial marketing, Microsoft, says five years ago, when he was there for the first time, AI, ML (machine learning), and non-generative AI were popular conversations. But this year, it is likely going to be so different with gen AI playing a bigger role and taking center stage in manufacturing—but there will also be a lot more beyond AI.
“Together with Gen AI, you have automation becoming more real,” he says. “You have robotics becoming more of a core element of what manufacturers do. Edge AI now suddenly playing a role that it couldn’t playing before because now you can compute at the edge level and now you can apply an AI model on top of that local data in a way that wasn’t possible before.”
The State of Manufacturing
Manufacturing is in the midst of a fundamental change, one where we are seeing worker shortages, supply-chain and climate disruptions, regulation, and so much more spurring on a new evolution in manufacturing.
Bogobowicz says there are traditional concerns that manufacturers have always faced like the need for cost control and efficiency, but there are also new considerations like tariffs and a rapidly changing overall geopolitical landscape.
The questions now become: How do we become more agile and innovative to address all the challenges the manufacturing industry faces? How do we prepare our workforce? How do we build up the skillset necessary to leverage all this innovation to deliver products to the customer faster than ever before?
The answer to all these questions is technology.
Of course, this is all easier said than done. Bogobowicz tells me, “Technology can help, but only if you think about it deeply and implement it in the right way.”
The Case for AI
Simply identifying how to proceed forward, we must consider a few successful examples of how technology can help in the manufacturing industry.
Harting provides connectors that are used in manufacturing and many other industries. A company choosing a component from Harting has more than 27,000 different options—or they can build a custom component. This is a very difficult decision to make—and AI can help. The technology can match the components against a verbal description that a customer can give to the system. For those building a custom component, the client can provide the specification needed to go into the design engineering. The AI solution reduced configuration time to just 1 minute, significantly improving efficiency and rapid creation of custom prototypes.
Cemex is a global building materials company providing innovative and sustainable solutions for the construction industry. Cemex was challenged with quickly tailoring solutions to meet customers’ needs and enhancing the agility of their supply chain and sales force. It developed Technical Xpert, an AI-assistant running on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service with GPT 4.0, embedded in Teams. As a result, the impact has been significant. Sales agents are now able to access information in nine seconds instead of an hour, leading to a more responsive and efficient supply chain. This improvement has streamlined operations, reduced delays, and enhanced overall customer satisfaction. Additionally, having the AI agent embedded in the familiar Teams application has made it easier for sales agents to adopt and use the tool effectively, leveraging existing workflows and communication channels.
These are only two unique examples. Naturally, AI can help in many industries—manufacturing as an example. Looking at the numbers we see manufacturers contributed $2.93 trillion to the U.S. economy in the third quarter of 2024 alone, up from $2.91 trillion in the second quarter, according to the National Assn. of Manufacturers. It will be interesting to see what the next report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis suggests soon to see what direction manufacturing trends.
Looking ahead, the bottomline is manufacturers can use AI to help move forward, despite some of the challenges the industry currently faces like the worker shortage. We know gen AI is on the rise—with Fortune Business Insights anticipating a 39.6% growth rate between 2024 and 2032—and technology can help manufacturers thrive and take their businesses to the next level in the next few years. It will be truly exciting to see all the innovations coming out of Hannover Messe that will help shape the course for what’s to come next.
Links for Further Learning:
Learn more about Microsoft’s Hannover Messe announcements
Check out the ebook about Top Gen AI use cases in manufacturing
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