TECH & AI
“CREATIVITY AND FLEXIBILITY REMAIN FUNDAMENTALLY HUMAN STRENGTHS”
Tim Foreman R & D Manager OMRON Europe
AI chatbot to guide maintenance technicians, which was banned internally after a technician followed a suggested fix and disabled a machine’ s safety guard.
Beyond safety, Tim points to dignity as an often-overlooked dimension of digitalisation. He explains:“ Treating people as valued individuals, giving meaningful feedback and not reducing them to repetitive, meaningless tasks. That’ s a principle close to OMRON’ s own philosophy of respect for people, and it should guide how we automate, not just what we automate.”
Future impacts Tim says he prefers to talk about the next 12 years rather than the next 12 months:“ Real change in factories happens much more slowly than the current hype suggests.”
Over the coming year, he expects more tools that help engineers close the gap between a factory’ s digital design and its real-world performance. Fully autonomous, self-correcting factories, however, remain a much longer journey, Tim says.
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