Artificial Intelligence Bringing Precision and Speed to the Production Line

With the latest developments in artificial intelligence (AI) technology integrated with modern cloud platforms, embedding AI into business processes is no longer an expensive or lengthy process. is Automotive industry leaders are displaying a rapid approach to innovation, deploying an AI application in the manufacturing production line.

“As an example of the efficiency that AI can introduce, let’s consider production-line workers and engineers who manage reject rates in the pulley assembly process. This used to be a multi-step, manual process,” confirms Paul Bouchier, Sales Director at iOCO, within iOCO Software Distribution, an Infor Gold Partner.

“Now, through AI-driven anomaly detection, the process is radically changed, because machine learning actively checks every 10 minutes by processing millions of records of Internet of Things (IoT) sensor data on the pulley assembly production line for a potential increase in rejection rate. By suggesting the root cause for failure, workers can quickly resolve the issue in the production line. In practice, with AI, automotive leaders are recording the lowest levels of rejection rates than ever before.”

The precision and speed of the AI models are based on two years of production line and machine sensor data brought into the Infor Data Lake and used to train the machine learning (ML) model to observe when the pulley tightening process falls outside normal behavior, increasing the rejection rate.

“In practice, we’ve seen 99 percent faster detection and diagnosis of failure (from one day to 10 minutes), lower rejection rates, and improved overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and asset utilisation. As a result, better products are delivered, and these are passing quality checks on their first pass. This then leads to a reduction in scrap and parts rework, leading to even more consistent on-time order fulfillment to its customers,” adds Bouchier.

Creating agility in the sector, the AI applications can scale quickly and easily, across multiple production lines and factories. In addition, OEE is the gold standard for measuring manufacturing productivity. For example, an OEE score of 100% means only good parts are being manufactured as fast as possible with no stop time. In the language of OEE, that means 100% quality (only good parts), 100% performance (as fast as possible), and 100% availability (no stop time).

“Measuring OEE and asset utilisation is a manufacturing best practice to gain important insights into systematically improving the manufacturing process. Now AI delivers integrated business intelligence and reporting dashboards to track rejection rates, OEE, and additional key performance indicators (KPIs) in real time. This reduces manual load, simplifying and automating the reporting and self-service process,” concludes Bouchier.

Issued by Perfect Word Consulting (Pty) Ltd

For more information, contact perfectword@trinitas.co.za

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About iOCO

Established to simplify ICT, iOCO, a proudly EOH company, is Africa’s leading integrated technology services company, with the largest concentration of skills on the continent. As a Level 1 B-BBEE end-to-end ICT managed service provider and Cloud systems integrator, iOCO operates with over 20 years’ experience.  Its team of more than 4 500 specialists delivers custom development and integration, open source, enterprise applications, data and analytics, compute and platforms, digital industries and manage and operate solutions to over 1 000 top tier clients.

Inspired by digitally native internet organisations (iO) and creative organisations (CO) of the future, iOCO helps customers navigate the path to an exponential future. To achieve this vision, iOCO holds strategic OEM partnership agreements with more than 50 global leaders. For more information, please visit: ioco.tech          

About Infor
 

Infor is a global leader in business cloud software specialized by industry. Providing mission-critical enterprise applications to 67,000 customers in more than 175 countries, Infor software is designed to deliver more value and less risk, with more sustainable operational advantages. We empower our 17,000 employees to leverage their deep industry expertise and use data-driven insights to create, learn and adapt quickly to solve emerging business and industry challenges. Infor is committed to providing our customers with modern tools to transform their business and accelerate their own path to innovation. To learn more, please visit www.infor.com.

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