Artificial intelligence and machine learning are transforming the world – not least the manufacturing industry, and AI is set to create the fourth industrial revolution. This will be due to a combination of AI, advanced robots, additive manufacturing (or 3D printing) and the internet of things.

The manufacturing sector is the perfect place for AI to be applied – and although the industry 4.0 revolution is only just beginning, significant changes from AI are already being seen. From the design process to the production floor itself, to supply chains, administration and market research, AI is changing things forever.

Most companies are already seeing and will see positive effects from AI, with a predicted revenue increase of 22.6%. In fact, many manufacturing companies are already implementing AI practices – here are the top ways that AI is revolutionizing manufacturing already and will continue to in the future.

1. Spotting Defects

“In manufacturing, ongoing maintenance of production line machinery and equipment represents a major expense. It has a huge impact on productivity, and downtime often results in costing manufacturers up to $50 billion a year!” says Harris Hook, a project manager at Study demic and Uktopwriters.

Machines using AI are better at spotting manufacturing defects - in factories, AI cameras act as automated optical inspection machines that look for defects in manufactured items. Formerly, factories used basic image recognition technology and then sent products with possible defects to human workers to look for problems. In many cases, up to 40% of products sent were not actually defective, causing huge wastes of time and effort. By using new AI software, accuracy is improved, and the number of defective boards found with actual problems is increased.

2. Predictive Maintenance

Another way AI is transforming manufacturing industries is predictive maintenance – which is really just a fancy way of saying that AI algorithms in the form of machine learning can predict when a product or asset is going to malfunction.

According to research, AI-enhanced predictive maintenance of industrial equipment is also set to rise, reducing annual maintenance costs and inspection costs. It allows for huge reductions in costly unplanned downtime, too, as companies know when assets are going to be out of order and will extend the Remaining Useful Life of production machines and equipment.

3. Making Better Products

AI is changing the way companies design products, too – by generative design software, which allows detailed briefs of products to be put into an AI algorithm. The AI algorithm then explores the best ways to make the product and the best solutions for any anticipated problems. What’s fascinating about this is that the generative design software will explore every possible way to design the product, and then decide on the best method. It’s completely objective and doesn’t use any human assumptions – everything is tested according to its actual performance!

4. Adapting to the Market

AI can be used to optimise supply chains and help companies predict market changes, giving them a huge advantage to be strategic with products and updates, and plan ahead rather than just responding to changes.

AI can estimate market demands by looking at patterns in location, socioeconomic factors, weather patterns, changes in politics, changes in consumer behaviour, and so much more.

This will hugely decrease time spent reacting to market demands and instead will allow companies to be ahead of the game, releasing new products and updates at the exact time the consumer market is searching for them!

5. Collaboration

“In the coming years, humans and industrial robots are going to collaborate more and more – this means that more humans will be trained in advanced AI management, and more jobs will open in design, maintenance and programming. Meanwhile, unskilled labour jobs will be taken over by robots.” Says Krisha Foreman, a business writer at Australian help and State of writing.

Humans are going to need to be there to hand over tasks to robots and be engaged in the programming of robots, allowing them to perform cognitive tasks and make autonomous decisions based on real-time environmental data.

So, whilst many jobs will be overtaken by AI, human specialists in AI will be on the rise and more people will be gaining skillsets that allow them to program and manage these machines.

Molly Crockett is a tech security blogger for Eliteassignmenthelp.com and Australianreviewer.com. Molly’s writing focuses on how businesses can help protect themselves against the threats at large. She is always seeking ways to help develop writing and research skills in young people, and she teaches for Boom Essays.