MechChem Africa March 2020

⎪ Manufacturing and food processing ⎪

AI will be able to create net new processes. So a company like Whitworth may be able to predict quality problems before they happen, or create new AI-driven flavours to meet an individual customer’s tastes, as did distiller Diageo. Another area thatwill continue todevelop over the coming years is AI-powered demand planning and forecasting, as I mentioned in my predictions last year. As AIs are trained on the right data sets, manufacturers will be able to align their supply chain with demand projections to get insights that were previ- ously unimaginable. This in turn brings about a new mindset for the manufacturer, who is likely to con- sider only the manufacturing process as beginning in the factory and finishing when the goods leave thewarehouse. Just-in-time, the Toyota Production System concept, will be taken to new heights, in large part because AI allows a manufacturer to ask, “in time for what, exactly?”What is the event or combination of events that should trigger re- plenishment – a demand signal, a price drop in the component part or raw material – it could be anything, and the relationship may not be apparent without AI. In a November 2019 study from IFS, 40% of manufacturers said they were planning to implement AI for inventory planning and

year. After decades of incremental productiv- ity growth, the result of lean initiatives, auto- mation and stern discipline, manufacturers will use technology not to optimise, but to create. AI will let us create newways of doing things, and that means new revenue. q

logistics, followed by production scheduling and customer relationship management, each at 36%. A majority of 60% of total re- spondents said they were targeting produc- tivity improvements with these investments. The year 2020 really should be an exciting

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