The Primary AI Question For Manufacturers

Prashanthi Kolluru is the founder of KloudPortal. Helping global capability centers (GCCs) hire product-ready engineering pods.

Recently, I attended a conference in India focused on AI in manufacturing. The conversations were familiar: artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI, automation, Industry 4.0, data, productivity and the pressure to keep pace with rapid technological change.

But one question from the audience stayed with me for days: “When should we start with AI, and how should we start?”

It was a perfectly reasonable question. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I felt that it frames the problem incorrectly.

The Pertinent Question​

I believe manufacturers should not begin their technology transformation journey by asking when or how to introduce AI. They should begin by asking a much more fundamental question: What problems are we trying to solve?

That distinction matters.

Technology transformation should not become a technology-led exercise simply because a technology is new, powerful or receiving enormous attention. AI is a means to an outcome—not the outcome itself. Sometimes AI may be the right answer. Sometimes analytics, automation, better data engineering, cloud modernization, process redesign or a combination of technologies may be the better answer.

The starting point, therefore, should be the business problem.​

Real Business Considerations​

Consider a manufacturer struggling with unplanned equipment downtime. The conversation should not begin with, “Where can we deploy AI?” It should begin with, “Why are we experiencing downtime, what data do we have, how quickly can we identify the causes and what would a meaningful reduction in downtime be worth?”

That leads me to a simple framework for manufacturers.

The Manufacturing Framework​

Only then should we ask: Which technology can solve this problem most effectively?