The Microsoft Manufacturing Summit‚ held in both Chicago and Minneapolis this week‚ featured a C3.ai keynote on AI-based innovation for digital transformation in the manufacturing sector.
The keynote‚ entitled “Leading Digital Transformation” was led by Jim Hassman‚ C3.ai Group Vice President‚ Industrial Sales. Hassman covered the critical factors and key focus areas necessary for manufacturers to thrive in today’s competitive environment. Attendees learned about impactful business drivers and outcomes enabled through AI such as improving manufacturing operations‚ promoting innovation in product development‚ and creating new business models and opportunities for growth.
Manufacturers face a variety of challenges—commoditization‚ supply network visibility and complexity‚ and inventory levels—that catalyze efforts to transform operations. “Building technology solutions to address these challenges has been a time-consuming undertaking. In contrast‚ the C3 Platform accelerates development and deployment of advanced applications with AI predictive insights that drive economic value‚” said Hassman.
Applications such as stochastic inventory optimization‚ predictive maintenance‚ or supply network visibility and optimization can be built very rapidly on the C3 Platform. This avoids the lengthy “do-it-yourself” assembly of cloud microservices to try to address these areas. One developer can create a simple application on the C3 Platform in a week‚ compared with 5 developers over 15 weeks using existing microservices‚ Hassman noted.
C3.ai customer 3M addressed this at the Microsoft event in a presentation discussing its digital transformation strategy. 3M uses the C3 Platform and AI machine learning capabilities to serve customers with increased agility and efficiency. This approach is reaping significant tangible business results.
The Microsoft Manufacturing Summit‚ geared toward senior business leaders in manufacturing responsible for driving digital transformation‚ gathered industry executives‚ thought leaders‚ and manufacturing partners. The event also included a Microsoft session on AI responsibility that discussed the importance of ethical‚ responsible AI development and security with AI initiatives.
The Microsoft Manufacturing Summit took place on December 12 in Downers Grove‚ Ill.‚ and December 14 in Edina‚ Minn.
