Part 10: AI in your industry, and on the floor

Where does AI help a manufacturer's office?

Written lesson · about 3 minutes to read

The short answer

AI helps a manufacturer's office first: quotes drafted from your own job history, orders read into the ERP without re-typing, supplier invoices matched to receipts, and the floor's questions answered from your documents. Start there because the data already exists and a person at a desk catches any wrong draft.

Three things to remember

01Start in the office with quotes, order entry, supplier invoices and the floor's questions to the office.
02A quote is drafted from your own job history, and a person signs it before it leaves.
03Check your ERP and other systems first, because the AI repeats whatever they get wrong.

Why the office comes first

A plant already holds the data these tools need: requests for quote, orders, prices, receipts and drawings. Most of it sits in documents and systems in the office. A wrong draft there is caught by a person at a desk and costs a minute, and nothing on the floor has to change to try it.

The result can be counted in days and hours: how long a quote takes to go out, how long an order takes to reach the schedule, how many calls go to chasing information. That makes the first project easy to judge. Floor projects come later and go better once the office data is flowing.

Four places it helps first

Quotes come first. The AI reads the request, whether it is an email, a PDF or a drawing, and pulls out the quantity, material, tolerances and date. It then finds your last similar jobs and drafts a number from what they actually took, with the comparables shown beside it. The estimator corrects it in a minute instead of starting from nothing.

Orders read off emails go into the ERP (the system that holds customers, orders, prices and stock) without being typed twice. Supplier invoices are matched to what was received. Questions from the floor, such as the drawing revision, the spec or the customer's packaging requirement, are answered from your own documents.

The systems it reads

Every one of these tools reads from the systems you already run. The ERP holds customers, orders, prices, stock and purchasing. The MES (manufacturing execution system) records what is running, on what, by whom and against which order. The quality system holds results, and the maintenance system holds faults and work orders. Ask each tool which it reads, and how.

If a system is wrong, the tool is wrong too, in a fluent voice: last year's prices in the price list, a stock count that is fiction, an MES nobody logs into. The first month of a plant project is often spent finding which system is wrong and fixing it. That work pays before the tool does.

What stays with a person

A person signs every quote before it leaves, and that check is what makes the speed safe. New geometry, a material you have not run or a tolerance tighter than anything in your history gives the tool thin evidence and a confident number. Send those quotes to an estimator first, not last.

On the floor, AI reads. It does not set a parameter, stop a machine or make a safety decision. Also read your customers' rules before pasting any drawing into an AI tool. Many customers say where their drawings and specs may go, and a consumer app on an engineer's phone is usually not one of those places.

Where to start this week

Pick the one office task whose hours you can count: quotes, order entry, invoice matching or the floor's questions. Write down today's number, such as quote turnaround in days or expediting calls a week, and the date you will look again. Name one person who owns it and can give it real time.

Run it with a person checking every output, and tell the floor what the tool reads and what it does not touch. After a quarter you will know whether the data is good enough, whether the team uses it and whether the number moved. That is what a second project needs to be funded.

Next lessonWhere does AI help a distribution or logistics business?

More in part 10

Next step

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