A Gap to be Filled by AI?

 Automation has long been championed as a driver of higher productivity in the manufacturing sector.  It has been very successful in some areas - most often in high volume manufacturing operations  such as automotive and computing.  We are all used to seeing robots carrying out activities such as welding car parts.

However in lower volume manufacturing operations, understandably, there has not been the same level of investment.  There is still a disconnect between the vision of automation and the technically and financially feasible creation of automation tools, flexible enough to cope with smaller batch numbers and run times.

Now there is hope that the addition of AI  and other advanced software technologies can bridge this gap and extend automation into more areas of manufacturing.  This allows intelligent control of flexible operations.  For example, vision systems allow machines to see what is happening, whether queue are forming and to assess the results of an operation such as assembly.  Overall control can be handled by a remote human operator who can monitor the images produced and adjust operations 'on the fly'.

Some technologies of interest are much simpler.  RFID tags are increasingly added to oomponents so they can be identified, located and handled more accurately.  This increase of contextual information enhances the ability of the larger systems and technologies to understand what is happening and make appropriate adjustments.

The net result is faster, smarter, more agile manufacturing systems - and, of course, higher productivity.