In this rapidly evolving world, 2024 continues to present a unique crucible for manufacturers worldwide. Emerging from a period of pandemic disruption, they now face a confluence of global and internal challenges. Manufacturers are seen managing operations amidst supply chain disruptions while grappling with cost optimization strategies tin this period of economic uncertainties. The internal squeeze only further intensifies manufacturers’ tightrope walk of focusing on addressing compounding labor market shortages and optimizing production while minimizing waste and ensuring all sustainability priorities are met.
Manufacturers faced with challenges rely on AI to address them
IDC’s CIO Playbook 2024, commissioned by Lenovo, indicates that IT and business leaders are looking at the application of new technologies, including AI, to address the balancing act of supply chain resiliency, operational efficiency, and the need to innovate while retaining and upgrading talent continuously. As they focus on driving automation and transforming their businesses with AI, manufacturers are looking to prioritize revenue and profit growth, employee productivity and higher customer satisfaction, while protecting and future-proofing the organization.
The manufacturing landscape of 2024 is undeniably challenging. Manufacturers are looking to leverage AI’s prowess to achieve greater supply chain resilience, optimize production processes, and emerge as leaders in a sustainable future. Such an AI-led metamorphosis requires a commitment to digital transformation and a willingness to explore the boundless potential of AI. However, the CIO Playbook identifies that manufacturers may not know how to begin as they pointed out the lack of IT support for AI deployment and difficulty in keeping up with AI tech requirements.
Lenovo is AI-ready, empowering manufacturers to unlock real impact
Backed by decades of innovation, Lenovo’s consistently evolving technology expertise and leadership has allowed the company to be a reliable technology partner for manufacturers, enabling them to unlock the full potential of technology and guiding them to success.
Lenovo’s key to being a successful end-to-end, trusted and transformative partner for manufacturers is the fact that the company understands and empathizes with the challenges that come with industry developments that Lenovo, a manufacturer itself, has experienced.
- To keep production lines running smoothly, Lenovo optimized its own production scheduling through its in-house Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) technology.
- This capability yielded tremendous results in increasing production line capacity by 24%, production volumes by 19%, on-time deliveries by 3.5X, and accelerating production schedule planning from two hours to two minutes.
- A new planning system, leveraging digital twin technology and developed in-house by Lenovo, powers Lenovo’s smart device manufacturing without requiring pausing the line to retool for new projects.
- Lenovo’s Supply Chain Intelligence (SCI) technology continuously analyzes data to identify potential issues and resolve them in real time.
- SCI has managed to integrate siloed operational systems into a central platform – including intelligent supply and demand planning, procurement, manufacturing quality management, fulfillment and logistics.
- Today, SCI performs over 1500-data related tasks – revealing hidden insights that would be impossible for humans to uncover.
- Lenovo’s ESG Navigator uses AI technology to make sustainable manufacturing more energy-efficient and agile in responding to public opinion risks.
- ESG Navigator provides 30+ AI models in energy efficiency & energy conservation scenarios, achieving energy savings of over 15% while ensuring feeling comfortable.
- With NLP technology, ESG Navigator can show the factory’s real-time ESG exposure totals, hot words, and reputation values, and the differences in communication channels, content, and timing of different ESG topics, to provide ammunition for the next round of communication planning.
Lenovo is making AI-powered innovation for manufacturers a reality by offering its full stack of AI-ready and AI-optimized infrastructure, solutions, and services. Powered by industry experience and turnkey partnerships, Lenovo’s customized, purpose-built solutions are helping manufacturers implement AI for smarter operations and advanced automation:
- Lenovo’s AAA solution (AS/RS: Automated Storage and Retrieval System + AMR: Autonomous Mobile Robot + AI) is accelerating the digital transformation of warehouse operations. AS/RS increasing throughput and inventory capability. AMR empowers operation flexibility and resilience. AI algorithms and machine vision enable scattered isolated automation as one unified intelligent platform. Typically, the warehouse powered by various industry-leading AI algorithms will have 30% higher throughput, 35% better space utilization, 30% faster order fulfillment and 50% clearer visualization, and AI helps in analyzing the data to make real-time optimization decisions in robot scheduling, device management, exception handling and navigation planning, etc.
- Lenovo Daystar, a digital inspection platform, boasts a range of AI capabilities and employs digital technologies to observe, monitor, document and analyze the condition and quality of equipment, processes and environment, provide real time alarm/warning and generate insightful inspection reports. It utilizes cutting-edge AI technology and complex detection Logic to reconstruct scenarios based on a large vision model, ensuring the capture of inspection anomalies. The platform is customizable and adaptable for different business scenarios and can reach a high standard of image recognition for industrial inspection:
- Meter reading (deviation ≤ ±2%)
- Equipment defect detection (recall ≥ 90%, precision ≥ 90%)
- Environmental condition monitoring (accuracy ≥ 96%)
- Personnel operation recognition (accuracy ≥ 96%)
- Equipment status monitoring (accuracy ≥ 99%).
Lenovo makes seamless AI deployment a reality in manufacturing
Getting started with AI journeys must not become a complicated experience for businesses. Manufacturers will need to focus on imperatives such as top-down business policy initiatives, bottom-up proposal collection, seeking professional advice from experienced technology partners like Lenovo, carefully designing POCs, and considering medium to long-term rewards in ROI evaluations. Lenovo AI Services is helping technology and business leaders to strategically navigate the AI ecosystem, leverage the right solutions, and put AI to work. Manufacturers worldwide are benefitting from Lenovo’s support to mitigate the complexities of AI implementation and help achieve real business outcomes fast through:
- Advisory Services for AI:
- AI Discover – Lenovo tailors AI Discover engagements to help customers visualize and map out their strategy and resources for AI adoption. It includes discovering operational roadblocks and specific use cases aligned with outcome objectives to design potential AI solutions. Lenovo’s experts assess the organization’s AI readiness across security, people, technology, and process – using proven methodology – with recommendations that put customers on a path to AI success.
- AI Advisory – Lenovo’s experts analyze IT/OT capabilities, identify gaps between current and future operational models, and recommend the most effective security posture, change management plan, technology architecture, and adoption plan for AI, based on customer strategy and objectives. Lenovo helps define the desired outcomes of AI at any scale, from pocket to cloud and co-develops the roadmap to get there.
- Professional Services for AI:
- AI Fast Start – Lenovo’s experts design and build critical AI elements to showcase how those key customer outcomes can be achieved, whether they are business, operational, or technology outcomes. This may take the form of a proof of concept or MVP (minimum viable product) in either Lenovo or customer labs.
- AI Deploy & Scale – Lenovo deploys the tools and frameworks to implement a fully secure and scalable AI system or fleet. Customers may choose to deploy either via the client’s own environment or via Lenovo TruScale as-a-service, which can further reduce the upfront costs to help deploy GenAI and scale with ease.
- Managed Services for AI:
- AI Managed – Lenovo offers specialized guidance to maintain, manage, and optimize the AI system. Lenovo partners with customers to support IT deployments for their lifetime and continuously cultivates and qualifies an ecosystem of AI Innovators so that AI use cases can grow with AI maturity.
As manufacturers navigate the complexities of the post-pandemic landscape, the integration of AI emerges as a pivotal strategy. By leveraging AI, manufacturers can not only address immediate operational challenges but also pave the way for long-term resilience and innovation. Lenovo’s commitment to AI readiness and seamless deployment underscores its role as a key enabler in this transformation. As the industry continues to evolve, those who embrace AI will be better positioned to optimize production, reduce waste, and meet sustainability goals, ensuring a competitive edge in an increasingly demanding market.
Find out more about Lenovo Manufacturing Solutions today.