How Smart Can a Machine Get? Check Out the New Artificial Intelligence

This collection of applications reveals the different ways AI and machine learning are improving plant operations.

Rob Spiegel

August 18, 2021

19 Slides
Generative Design.jpeg
Adobe Stock

Manufacturing equipment keeps reaching new stages of capabilities and intelligence. What starts as a smart machine transforms into equipment infused with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Data coming off the equipment becomes big data and moves through data analysis. The digitally generated data is used to produce leaps in productivity.

AI and machine learning assist engineers and data scientists to structure, analyze, and evaluate a huge volume of data. The application improvements include smart recommendations, generative design, anomaly detection, and preventive maintenance. Altogether AI and machine learning optimize the way products are designed and produced.

Let’s take a look at all of the functions that are moving into AI and machine learning.

Rob Spiegel has covered manufacturing for 19 years, 17 of them for Design News. Other topics he has covered include automation, supply chain technology, alternative energy, and cybersecurity. For 10 years, he was the owner and publisher of the food magazine Chile Pepper.

About the Author

Rob Spiegel

Rob Spiegel serves as a senior editor for Design News. He started with Design News in 2002 as a freelancer covering sustainability issues, including the transistion in electronic components to RoHS compliance. Rob was hired by Design News as senior editor in 2011 to cover automation, manufacturing, 3D printing, robotics, AI, and more.

Prior to his work with Design News, Rob worked as a senior editor for Electronic News and Ecommerce Business. He served as contributing editolr to Automation World for eight years, and he has contributed to Supply Chain Management Review, Logistics Management, Ecommerce Times, and many other trade publications. He is the author of six books on small business and internet commerce, inclluding Net Strategy: Charting the Digital Course for Your Company's Growth.

He has been published in magazines that range from Rolling Stone to True Confessions.

Rob has won a number of awards for his technolloghy coverage, including a Maggy Award for a Design News article on the Jeep Cherokee hacking, and a Launch Team award for Ecommerce Business. Rob has also won awards for his leadership postions in the American Marketing Association and SouthWest Writers.

Before covering technology, Rob spent 10 years as publisher and owner of Chile Pepper Magazine, a national consumer food publication. He has published hundreds of poems and scores of short stories in national publications.

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