Last week, a company called Landing AI announced the launch of a new platform to help manufacturers build, deploy and scale AI-powered visual inspection on the factory floor. Amid the pandemic, cutting edge technology such as AI implementation in inspection, design, maintenance and forecasting has become more of a must-have than ever, helping companies in the hard-hit manufacturing sector reduce costs and improve quality.
In this new era, industrial companies must deliver in-demand products but in some cases are getting by with fewer workers.
Adding to this, coronavirus-related regulations and social distancing protocols can make some aspects of the manufacturing and inspection processes cumbersome.
Today, we’re taking a closer look at AI in manufacturing and providing some details on on Landing AI’s latest announcement.
AI and Manufacturing
The use of AI in manufacturing has made headlines for several years now, with more and more companies adopting this technology.
Transformative technology research group ABI Research predicts that by the year 2024, manufacturers will install 15 million AI enabled devices worldwide, reaching a compound annual growth rate of 64.8%.
The Pandemic is likely to speed up that adoption rate even more.
AI devices in manufacturing can perform a wide variety of tasks such as predictive maintenance, defect inspection, equipment monitoring, production forecasting and optimization, inventory management, and generative design.
However, manufacturers tend to make the most use of predictive, monitoring and defect detection software.
AI ROI and Costs
The costs savings for these systems is significant, particularly when it comes to defect detection, with some estimating that unplanned downtime due to systems malfunction costs the industrial sector in the region of $50 billion annually.
However, adopting AI can be an expensive prospect, and some manufacturing CEOs estimate the ROI for digital transformation technologies to take 3-5 years. Broadly speaking, implementing custom AI can cost anywhere from $6,000 to $300,000, and AI consultants can charge $200-$350 per hour.
Despite the high cost of implementation, supply chain and manufacturing applications are the two most likely to see a cost savings, according to a survey by McKinsey and Company.
In the survey, released at the beginning of 2020, 64% of respondents reported a 64% cost reduction in manufacturing, while another reported a 61% reduction in supply chain planning costs.
LandingLens: Cutting Edge Tool for Visual Inspection on the Factory Floor
Traditionally, inspections such as defect assessment and assembly verifications on the assembly floor have been performed by manually by humans, but more companies are turning to AI, especially amid the Pandemic. A variety of factors play into this, including the obvious benefits of accuracy, flexibility and costs savings afforded by AI systems.
Says Andrea Ng, the CEO of Landing AI “AI-powered visual inspection solutions have demonstrated clear advantages over conventional methods, yet the overall adoption is slow as many companies get stuck after some small scale proof-of-concept projects. LandingLens, developed with the know-how and expertise from building and shipping many visual inspection projects, is best positioned to bridge the gap and enable teams to succeed. With an intuitive interface, Landing AI’s visual inspection platform allows even non-AI experts to train and deploy a model with a few clicks, putting the ownership of the solution in the hands of users so they can build and update the solutions without being beholden to a third-party AI team.”
The company says unlike other point solutions, like data labeling or edge deployment, Landing AI’s platform provides end-to-end capabilities and includes everything customers need to move from collecting data to getting an AI system up and running in production.
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