How Companies Are Using AI Beyond the Hype

“This year we have already seen the first use cases, some of them quite extensive, involving artificial intelligence. Companies here are developing rapidly,” reports Daniel Stengel, Kearney’s Factory of the Year Director & Project Manager. A beautiful one Dynamics, in his opinion, because this continues last year’s trend of companies managing the issues of use themselves as part of the development of citizens.

Like this year’s winner in the ‘Special Small Series Production’ category, for example. The high level of expertise in quickly and cost-effectively developing tools to digitize production processes is one of the success factors at the Festool Weilheim / Neidlingen plants, where AI and VR applications are being tested already in the assembly environment.

“These are the use cases for AI“In which companies see an important added value, such as increasing production, improving quality, reducing effort or increasing productivity,” said his colleague Philipp Yoldasis, Principal of Kearney. AI solutions are now an integral part, especially in the areas of design, maintenance and quality. However, they are not used there as an end in themselves: together with automation initiatives – as with other digitization initiatives – the main goal is to realize development potential.

How much AI can contribute to this alreadyespecially evident in the overall winner Wilo, the Dortmund plant. Factory has 2024 after winning in the ‘Special Transformation: Digitization’ category it will further expand its capabilities in 2022 and, among other things, thanks to the diverse use of tools for digitization, it is now able to respond quickly, which leads to low downtimes despite the various variations and direct integration.

At the Mercedes-Benz Rastatt plant, digitization is also an integral part of increasing productivity, flexibility and speed. Regular use of the Digital Twin allows the winner of the ‘Special Digital’ category to introduce new models with minimal disruption to operations.

Technology is changing the business case

“Of course, these measures are often related to the fact that there are no longer enough workers who want to take on certain tasks,” Stengel said, citing one reason for the continued increase in rate automation. But it’s also a fact that a few years ago there wasn’t a business case for this, “because back then it was just more cost effective to do it by hand because the number of pieces wasn’t available or the variation was too big,” describes the situation Stengel.

Now that you have this theme for example with cobots Technology can be addressed better, the business case can also be seen in a different way: the calculation is now not made against the savings of employees, but against the lost sales. And: The automation of some activities creates an opportunity to increase the employee’s added value. A development that favors operational improvements at the GEO Award winner, the Fischer Group, production plant in Ivanovice na Hane, Czech Republic.

Rising wages, energy and factor costs – current cost inflation was clearly visible in this year’s competition. “Of course, this now means that such business cases are becoming even more attractive and worth investing in. Not only in automation, but also in sustainability initiatives, which are now evaluated differently,” says Yoldais.

The reuse of systems and their components is an important issue that companies are aware of and, of course, also contributes to sustainability. “The sustainability leaders draw “It is distinguished by the fact that they are able to generate a circular economy from sustainability, in which individual components of the product are reused after being used by the customer,” Yoldasis points out an opportunity to position yourself sustainably and economically at the same time.

Not only does this make the factories more independent from suppliers. You also save material costs and emissions during production. Benefits since the winner in the ‘Excellence in Sustainability’ category, Philips Medical Systems GmbH, Hamburg plant, has long benefited thanks to its Design for Sustainability approach.

The 33rd factory of the year also showed, according to the industry, that companies are becoming more resistant to volume fluctuations due to cost pressure and current market challenges. Flexibility and modularization play a big role in production.

The winner in the category ‘Special Series Production’ also knows this: The BMW Group plant in Regensburg compensates for volume variations with a flexible production system and flexible personnel planning, based on a unique internal agreement BMW plant network.

Countering cost pressure with digitalisation, automation and sustainability – that was not the only main theme of this year’s benchmarking competition. Daniel Stengel will also give a speech about this at the accompanying Factory of the Year conference. This will take place on March 18 and 19, 2025 in Ludwigsburg, the evening event with an awards ceremony on March 18, 2025. It is possible to register here.