AI & Automation in Manufacturing: Threat or Opportunity?
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What are your thoughts on AI and Automation in manufacturing? There's a large number of under-employed people in the US, is this really the right focus? Should we mobilize the human workforce first? Are these related topics or unrelated?
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We're building a software product that helps manufacturers. It isn't a hardcore AI tool, but makes heavy use of AI.
My impression (and please give feedback) is that most of the AI promises are big and lofty--robots and agents and AGI and all that. We're trying to take a more pragmatic approach to applying AI, by using it to solve the age old problem of running your business on top of an ERP that probably isn't really built for your business. It's definitely not a "replace workers on the shop floor" perspective, but it might put some consultants out of job if we're successful.
We think the manufacturing sector has been woefully underserved by the software industry and that AI is one tool that can help us solve that.
