Manufacturing: AI Roadmap to 2040

Three horizons. Concrete pilots. KPIs that prove it works.

Now (0–12 months)

  • Line telemetry and downtime codes standardized
  • Vision QA on one product line; human-in-loop approvals
  • Digital work instructions with version control
  • OEE baseline per cell; pareto of chronic stops

Next (12–36 months)

  • Predictive maintenance on priority assets
  • Scheduling co-optimizer (materials + machines + labor)
  • Closed-loop quality with feedback to process settings
  • Supplier scorecards wired to incoming inspection

2030–2040

  • Self-balancing lines; autonomous material handling
  • Factory twins coordinate heat/power/materials
  • Configurable microfactories for short runs

Architecture notes

  • Event bus; time-series; MES connectors; schema registry
  • Recipe/parameter store with approvals; signed releases
  • Edge compute for vision + safety; zero-trust access

KPIs

  • OEE; FPY; scrap rate; schedule adherence
  • Unplanned downtime; maintenance prediction accuracy
  • Changeover time; cost per unit

First pilots

  • Vision QA cell; predictive on the bottleneck asset
  • CO2 + energy tracking per SKU; peak shaving in plant

Risks & guardrails

  • Legacy PLCs; solution: gateways and segmentation
  • Data quality drift; solution: golden datasets, audits
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