More recently, we talked about the fact that the main trend in the field of IT industrial production is automation. Enterprises have implemented (and continue to implement) IT solutions built on powerful computing technology. These solutions control the entire production cycle or its parts, and tight integration of production and IT systems provides flexibility of technological processes and makes it possible to quickly change the types of products. However, the emergence of ai in manufacturing makes it possible to solve production problems at a new level.
Specificity and fields of application
In industry, artificial intelligence-based systems are evolving rapidly. Meticulous MarketResearch predicts this segment will grow 39% over the next 8 years, and the industrial AI market will reach $ 27 billion by 2027.
The leader in the use of these products is the United States, followed by the countries of Southeast Asia (most of the manufacturing enterprises are located in China). However, globally, the figure is quite modest – only 6% of industrial organizations in the world, according to Gartner, use artificial intelligence.
In Russia, the market for AI solutions for manufacturing is still small. Technavio analysts say it will hit as little as $ 500 million by the mid-2030s.
Most projects for the introduction of artificial intelligence in industry in Russia are implemented at discrete manufacturing enterprises: in aviation, mechanical engineering and instrument making. This is followed by projects in metallurgy, chemistry and petrochemicals, mining and power generation.
As for the functional areas of production, AI is used to improve the efficiency of new product development, automate the selection and evaluation of suppliers, analyze the requirements for spare parts and parts. In the manufacturing process itself, AI is required to improve business processes and coordinate various subsystems. These are cases for minimizing the number of personnel errors, reducing downtime, analyzing the movement of employees and equipment to improve safety at the enterprise, quality control and analysis of equipment condition.
The next area is logistics. In it, artificial intelligence improves the planning of transportation routes, reduces the delivery time of raw materials, monitors shipments and delivery at all stages.
The specificity of the work of AI in industry is related to the fact that when creating models it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of enterprises, which, even when working with the same metal, may differ from each other. But with these differences, artificial intelligence helps all industrial organizations where direct algorithmic calculation is impossible or difficult, where there are many variable factors and unknowns, where the engineer evaluates the necessary actions based on his own expert experience.
Barriers to working with industrial enterprises
The number of players who develop AI systems like DataScience UA is significantly less than companies working, for example, in retail. In this market, there are both international technology vendors:
- Alphabet;
- Oracle;
- SAP;
- Cisco Systems;
- Rockwell Automation;
- AMD;
- NVIDIA;
- Intel;
- IBM;
- Microsoft;
- AWS, and manufacturing enterprises that, based on their own experience, offer the solutions they use, for example GE, Siemens, Mitsubishi Electric and Bosch.
Probably, the complex production process also determines the absence of a large number of successful cases of using AI in the Russian industry. Despite the fact that similar projects are underway at Severstal, KamAZ, Rusal, we see not many success stories.