Manufacturing software, buttressed by AI, could change metal fabrication as we know it
Artificial intelligence is a trendy term, often used loosely to describe all kinds of problem-solving software. It can seem arcane, but under the hood, AI is nothing more than a tool to take information and make decisions with it.
What might that look like? Your cell phone might use AI to focus its camera automatically on people. AI software might be used to predict the weather using satellite imagery. In the fab shop, AI might predict scrap rates and handling times, produce more efficient material nests, and create highly optimized production schedules.
The operative word here is might. The term “AI” properly refers to a particular class of decision-making algorithms. Cameras were autofocusing and software was predicting the weather long before it became popular to call it artificial intelligence. In fact, many complex problems may be solved easily without the use of AI, but people will want to call it artificial intelligence anyway.
That’s not a problem, per se. But as we explore the possible applications of AI in the fab shop, it’s worth pointing out that software automation is powerful not because it uses AI, but because it simplifies and automates things. Sometimes AI helps under the hood, sometimes it doesn’t. At the end of the day, you probably wouldn’t care either way as long as the software does its job.
Software automation as a whole has a host of applications in the fab shop, doing in seconds what it used to take people days or even weeks to perform. AI is just one of many tools that make the magic happen.
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