The application status of AI in manufacturing industry

At present, artificial intelligence (AI) technology has become an important driving force for a new round of global scientific and technological revolution and industrial change, and its application scope has gradually expanded from consumer intelligence to the field of enterprise intelligence, driving and creating more powerful productivity, and bringing profound impact on many industries.

Enterprises generally believe that AI technology will have an impact on their future development. However, the vast majority of enterprises are not ready for AI applications, there is a general lack of awareness of AI, and a lack of professional talent teams, training programs, and do not yet have the skills required for AI applications.

Reducing cost and increasing efficiency is the core goal of enterprise management, and enterprises expect to achieve this goal through the application of AI. AI also has the potential to promote innovation, as AI products and solutions become more diversified, the future enterprises may pay more attention to the use of AI to enhance product design, personalized marketing and other innovation capabilities, to promote business continued growth and transformation and upgrading.

There are many potential applications of AI in the manufacturing industry, covering all aspects of the value chain such as research and development, production and manufacturing, quality control, supply chain logistics, and marketing services. The survey involved product assisted design, production scheduling and scheduling, quality control and defect detection, production process optimization, procurement forecasting, sales forecasting, intelligent sorting, customer portrait and other application scenarios. According to the survey, the production and manufacturing process is the first choice for enterprises to deploy AI applications.

The application modes, algorithms and models of AI projects are diverse. Enterprises have chosen different application models to promote the landing of AI projects, including independent research and development, purchase of services, cooperation with manufacturers, complete outsourcing, etc., among which the partner model and the purchase of services model are mostly. In terms of application architecture and algorithm selection, Google TensorFlow, Baidu PaddlePaddle, Huawei MindSpore and other open source frameworks have been applied, and a variety of algorithms such as supervised learning and unsupervised learning have been applied.

In the face of the current rapid development of AI technology, many enterprises are not fully prepared. There are many problems in enterprises, such as lack of professional talents and lack of technical ability in special training. In terms of training, only 9% of enterprises have provided AI related training for employees, and 65% of enterprises have not yet carried out relevant training. In terms of talent construction, only 2% of enterprises have talents with professional skills and knowledge of AI, and 42% of enterprises have not yet trained or introduced talents in the field of AI.

Generative AI technology (AIGC) is gaining momentum around the world. Based on the support of the underlying large model, multi-modal applications including text generation, image generation, audio generation, video generation, code generation and agent/digital person have emerged, realizing the leap development of generative AI applications. The technology has gradually penetrated into many application fields such as general tools, general software, industry software, intelligent hardware, etc. Tool applications include chatbots, virtual digital people, search engines, text dialogue, AI painting, code AIDS, etc. General purpose software includes office software with an integrated assistant (Copilot), business services, cybersecurity and other related products; Industry software mainly involves the application of vertical industries such as finance, medical care, education and industry; Intelligent hardware includes automobiles, robots, intelligent terminal equipment, etc.

Manufacturing companies are optimistic about the application of generative AI in manufacturing. The disruptive innovation brought about by generative AI has made manufacturing companies optimistic about the application of the technology in manufacturing. Nearly 80% of enterprises are optimistic about the application of generative AI in the manufacturing industry, and one-third of enterprises believe that the integration of generative AI in the manufacturing industry is obvious and will usher in breakthrough progress in the next five years.