AI
How is this transition manifesting differently in retail aisles versus on the manufacturing floor in terms of long-term strategy?
Mark Thomson: Retail is a fast-moving industry with high-volume direct customer engagement in store and online, along with business-to-business engagement across supply chains. AI strategies are being executed, with solutions already widely used and piloted across inventory and cost optimisation, enhanced search and upsell.
Customer experience strategy is also benefitting from AI capabilities, which can positively impact sales. For example, shopper self-scanners are very popular with shoppers, and we’ re seeing supermarkets extend value by using AI to analyse shopper behaviour and purchasing data to deliver more personalised recommendations on the device screen as the shopper moves around the shop. This could extend to dynamic advertisements and offers across retail media networks in store, based on AI analysis of shopper behaviours correlated to days, times and external factors like public holidays and sporting events. This type of strategy can elevate the customer experience and positively impact sales.
Jason Harvey: Manufacturing comes with a lot of structure and repeatability, but it’ s also a much more closed environment compared to retail. This brings its own set of strategic opportunities and requirements for AI, including getting IT and OT to agree on where to focus AI investments. Our industry research – Elevating manufacturing value: The impact of Intelligent Operations – finds that manufacturers are using AI today for product quality intelligence and inventory optimisation, among other workflows.
For example, machine vision smart sensors with pre-trained deep learning models on-device can perform optical character recognition and anomaly, and defect detection. This automates a demanding and important job and elevates quality, as deep learning machine vision provides very high levels of accuracy at sub-millimetre levels.
High-quality data is also a foundational issue for AI success in manufacturing. Our research finds that most manufacturers say structured data analysis is performed only in select areas or remains limited and siloed. Some are further ahead: one-fifth say their data management process is automated and performed across multiple functions, and 11 % say theirs is fully integrated throughout the organisation with AI insights.
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