Implementing an industrial process has a high cost, and its return on investment is linked to the production in large quantities. That’s why it’s not recommended to eliminate an operational process or to interrupt the current production to try a new method. How to innovate in these conditions? How to test what advantages these new technologies bring without committing production lines and R&D budget towards an uncertain result?
The answer to these questions is predictive and prescriptive analytics through an AI that has a complete view on the production processes. When imagined from its inception to reproduce the mechanisms of production, a virtual model is no longer disconnected from the physical world. It reacts like the real system it copies, allowing to quickly test new configurations at minimal cost, without financial risks and without touching the hardware.
Confirm before acting
Starting with an exploratory workshop, it is possible to detect early if the sensor data originally harvested is adequate and sufficient in volume to solve the business challenges. Historical data are then processed to construct a model, which is evaluated and validated with the subsequent data. Using new technologies such as AI, the model can then predict the future production gains per the chosen parameters, and prescribe the best actions to achieve an optimal result.
Test before implementing
Before engaging in profound, expensive and risky changes, the industrialist can then compare the AI-assisted pilot production with an unchanged production line. Once the concrete results have been validated, the new technologies can be deployed in other production lines and then in other plants. "We are making our experiments in a digital laboratory stored in the cloud", recently explained Jean-Philippe Hugo, CEO of Wizata, in the Silicon Luxembourg magazine. "When the client is ready we can move from research to production with the flick of a switch."
Grab your competitive advantage
Industrial companies must embrace digital transformation and turn insights from their data into foresight with predictive and prescriptive analytics. The manufacturing sector has an advantage over many other industries, because sensors already record thousands of data variables on machine components. All that remains is to convert this bulk of information into a competitive advantage.
