Yesterday, 19 interested participants gathered at Hymmen Maschinenbau GmbH for the kick-off of the working group on digitalization in small and medium-sized enterprises to discuss approaches and potential for increasing factory performance through digitalization.
In his keynote speech, Ingo Laqua presented the basic options available to medium-sized companies for increasing their factory output using digitalization and AI, even on a small budget. His credo: don’t just follow the hype, but weigh up the costs and benefits.
Carsten Brinkmeyer then explained how a medium-sized machine and plant manufacturer came to develop its own tool for AI-based machine data collection and evaluation. Initially developed only for customers of its own production plants, Smart2i records any process parameters and can use correlation analyses to determine the interrelationships between the parameters and their effect on process quality at the touch of a button. Smart2i is now also being sold to external customers by a separate company.
In the concluding discussion, digital readiness was discussed using specific examples from participants, and company-specific starting points were discussed. The topics for the next working group meetings were also discussed, which will deal with large language models, automation, and AI examples from production, among other things.
Further information on the next meetings will follow …