102 and engineering tasks. “The integration of Siemens Teamcenter software and Microsoft Teams facilitates virtual collaboration across the product design and manufacturing lifecycle, enabling seamless communication and coordination among team members,” says Floyd. “An early adopter of the Siemens Industrial Copilot is Schaeffler, a leading automotive supplier, demonstrating the practical application and benefits of generative AI in the manufacturing industry.” These collaborations show how generative AI can empower manufacturers and drive advancements in industrial automation and digital transformation. Floyd highlights that these technologies can quickly gain answers to the most asked questions in real-time manufacturing operations. “Every day people working in manufacturing are asking for answers to common situations such as the performance of a machine, but they wish to know how it compares to the previous hour, day or month,” he says. “Ordinarily this requires tables of data, analysis in a data tool, or pre-determined data views which then require interpretation. Generative AI can create the answer in natural language because it can traverse data faster than any human and use reasoning to generate a response. It comes with the added benefit of data references so enquiring minds can examine the source data or check its validity. “Imagine how powerful this can be for the many simple questions that are a raised in a factory every day but usually require access to many different data sources just to establish a body of knowledge, which then still requires analysis to form an answer. AI eliminates the lengthy process entirely by providing real answers in just seconds. In any type of operation, whether it’s in the factory, warehouse, or office, this is truly transformative.” “ Generative AI can create the answer in natural language because it can traverse data faster than any human” FEATURE Schaeffler is realising the benefits of generative AI in its operations Photo: Schaeffler
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