TECH & AI
There ’ s a persistent cultural narrative about AI . That it – regardless of application , functionality or circumstance – is designed to take . That it comes in , outpaces labour , emulates craftsmanship and replaces workforces without giving anything back , other than value to the shareholders .
ECI ’ s new AI , announced at the Hannover Messe earlier this year proves this de-facto narrative wrong .
KonnectAi , created by ECI in partnership with Google , is designed to complement and uplift rather than compete with the existing manufacturing workforce . Enhancing efficiency and increasing digital skills , this AI ’ s development is driven by a desire to see the manufacturing sector and its people enter an era of digital transformation with confidence and competence . Manufacturing Digital sat down with Jarred Knecht , the President of ProEV and Promark Electronics , divisions of Electrical Components International , to discuss KonnectAi , and what exactly it was going to take to make manufacturing sexy .
We start by discussing a question that takes us back to KonnectAi ’ s inception . According to Jarred , it was born three years ago from a need in ECI ’ s business . ECI is a global electronics manufacturer with 40 plants across the world , 25,000 employees , and complex supply chain operations . Jarred was already enthusiastic about the potential ways AI could enhance the business but recognised its application needed to be practical and long-lasting . “ It needed to be something tangible that could
affect the day-to-day operations of our business ,” he explains . “ Improve efficiency , improve quality , improve cost , all of those things together .”
Then , a vital opportunity was recognised – ECI ’ s quality inspection and traceability . “ We realised that that space hadn ’ t been tremendously reinvented in a long time ,” Jarred says , before discussing the inefficiency of traditional methods of quality inspection like ERP systems or using other types of IT
94 August 2024