As the year-end approaches, we can imagine, there is no place busier than Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole. Under the diligent guidance of our dear old Santa Claus, his legendary team of efficient elves make marvelous toys and presents for all the children around the globe.
In contrast to that singular legendary workshop, some lazy manufacturers put off production until just a couple of months before Christmas when they see they really need to get to it. And before you laugh it off, allow us to light some candles for you. Lazy Initialization can prove to be a SMART performance optimization strategy. Pay close attention to how you could avoid WIP or wastage, improve throughput, and still manage to meet the increasing demand during the festive season.
You can easily sense there is overall fatigue from the pandemic and the crowds of people are out on a buying spree to de-stress. These are clear indicators of the increased demand this winter for product manufacturers. No manufacturer would want to miss the peak sales period! However, you would think the lazy manufacturer who has started his production a little later in the day runs the risk of not delivering in time for the Christmas fervor.
Well, that notion may be true. To meet consumer demands, reducing production time and increased efficiency in inventory management becomes crucial. Stock-out due to underestimation, or the delay in raw material procurement, could disturb the product assembly and prevent the fulfillment of customers’ orders. That could, in fact, translate into a manufacturing disaster. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Applications have emerged as the solutions to such tricky situations.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
– Arthur C. Clarke
Like the elves on the shelves and their Elfin magic, AI apps can also control the production processes. One of the mythical spells is called Elementumkinesis —the power to manipulate all elements. Our real-world AI solutions do not have such tricky names.
We simply call it the Bodhee Production Scheduler. It improves process control by synchronized and LIVE end-to-end production scheduling. It gives a direct business benefit of optimized manufacturing with improved capacity utilization of 5-7%.
Together with Machine Learning algorithms, our AI app tracks and prevents unexpected delays or unforeseen stoppages in work with high accuracy. Thus, it considerably reduces the risk of impact on your production schedules and improves work order closure rate by 15-20%.
Our Reinforcement Learning algorithms help streamline your manufacturing with data-driven optimum inventory management. It catalyzes line efficiency and labor productivity by preventing downstream bottlenecks and thus helps prevention of delays in batch cycle-time by 3-5%.
To wrap things up….
Year-end festivities and Christmas present a great opportunity to leverage AI applications for handling demand and ensuring business growth. The adoption of AI in manufacturing allows companies to optimize production and efficiency. Quicker production can increase sales and customer satisfaction.
In the past, Christmas was a time where businesses saw a lull in production and had to lay off employees. Now, Christmas can be a time for joy and celebration for manufacturers, too! With the implementation of AI, a manufacturing system can increase production, in tandem with the growing demand, without hiring more staff or investing in new equipment. Some also successfully bag their annual manufacturing goals and golden ROI during the peak period.
Much like children, adults also revel in the joy of Christmas through gifting. Intelligent, agile manufacturing can enhance the spirit and be the greatest gift to all shoppers during Christmas.
References:
Foglia, E. (2018, November 8). “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” CCCB LAB. https://lab.cccb.org/en/arthur-c-clarke-any-sufficiently-advanced-technology-is-indistinguishable-from-magic/