AI Automation To Enable Smart Manufacturing
Heavy industries such as Steelmaking are ramping up digital transformation initiatives to improve throughput, efficiency, safety, and reliability of their operations. Metals, mining, and machine tool building companies are embarking on multi-year journeys to digitize operations by adding connectivity, automation, and advanced analytics. According to McKinsey, most heavy-industry sectors are at the middle stages of digital maturity (Digital 2.0) relying on rule-based automation and distributed control systems. Some have made progress in digital maturity (Digital 3.0) and are using collaborative robots and advanced process control systems. However, a few digital pioneers are leveraging AI Automation and applying Machine Learning (ML) to operational data (Digital 4). These digital leaders offer powerful lessons that others can emulate and follow to successfully deploy ML at scale. Drowning in Sensor Data With the ubiquitous sensor network and pervasive connectivity in industrial manufacturing, data from production machines has continued to grow at an unprecedented scale. …