AI is Finding its Way into Operational Settings, with Impressive Results

Artificial intelligence is seen as delivering insights within marketing, finance, and executive domains. Concurrently, an emerging proving ground for AI is within production and industrial settings, providing for workplace safety, predictive maintenance, more effective fleet management, and other “physical” operations.

This is the takeaway from a survey of 1,550 operations leaders released by Samsara, which finds just over half, 51%, are currently embracing AI as a competitive advantage and have data to prove it: they report positive ROI across safety and productivity measurements. Benefits cited include improved safety (45%) and employee productivity (42%).

Overall, whether they currently use it or not, 94% believe their organization needs to invest in AI technology solutions to keep up in today’s environment. Of those already using AI or planning to in the next one to two years, 58% are implementing privacy and data protection measures.

The top implementation for AI is aiding with outreach to customers and communities, cited by 52% A similar percentage employ AI to assist with predictive maintenance, or driver assistance. The leading use cases for AI in operations settings include the following:

• Customer & community support optimization 52%
• Predictive maintenance 51%
• Driver assistance systems 49%
• Safety & security 49%
• Traffic management software 48%
• Assisted decision making 46%

See also: Deliver Customer Service Autonomously? Hold That Thought

Many functional areas benefit from AI

All of the organizations using AI report they have experienced benefits from embedding AI within their operations, including improved safety (45%) and employee productivity (42%).

A key area for AI is vehicle management within operations settings, including autonomous vehicles (AVs) such as robotic forklifts and remotely-operated yard trucks. Still, interest in and expectations for AVs are high; the majority of leaders who already use or plan to use AVs named flexibility and scalability (54%), increased efficiency (50%), and improved customer and community experiences (50%) as the outcomes that would most benefit their organizations. However, only 22% of leaders expect AVs to be standard in their industry in the next two years, indicating a longer horizon for adoption.

AI and related technology is now essential “with continued pressures around labor shortages, geopolitical conflicts, and reshoring,” the survey’s authors point out.