How embracing AI built intelligent efficiencies for a manufacturing leader

Global manufacturing and supply chain management are more complex than ever. Rising geopolitical tensions, globalization of third-party partnerships, and rapid advances in AI and technology all present intersecting challenges. This was the case for a manufacturing leader who tapped EY to help re-envision and manage their business and technological transformation.

▉ The challenge

A global manufacturing leader was struggling to accelerate worldwide production in an industry plagued by supply chain challenges and rapid advances in AI and other technologies. The manufacturing leader tapped the EY team to help reboot their approach to operations and fast track an even brighter future.

▉ The breakthrough

The implemented improvements to date have already yielded significant time savings of 20% to 30%, enabling the rationalization of the company’s entire global plant footprint. To spearhead this joint initiative, an EY product manager and architect were assigned, bringing their expertise and managerial skills to bear on the tasks at hand. Critical to the success of this collaboration was conducting scenario and root cause analysis, which allowed us to better understand the variables influencing the product and enabled us to devise more targeted strategies. Furthermore, as part of our innovative approach, we employed Microsoft Azure to test the proof of concept for product formulation changes. This allowed us to simulate and evaluate potential changes without overcommitting resources, ensuring that the chosen strategy was validated before implementation.

▉ The result

The recent improvements implemented have generated notable efficiency, delivering time savings of 20%-30%. This has revolutionized the company's global plant operations while also providing human resources advantages. With Azure's capabilities and EY's process guidance, data scientists have taken on roles previously reserved for dedicated data and ML engineers, further contributing to productivity. These enhancements have expedited the realization of the company's digital strategy, setting a pace for future triumphs. Projected savings due to these changes are estimated at $50 million across their worldwide operations. Moreover, the EY team’s successful initial phase led to our engagement in an additional project aimed at improving manufacturing quality, utilizing AI and physics data sets for significant outcome improvements such as 50% time reduction in achieving optimal manufacturing material mix and color specifications. Currently, the program is being expanded using Azure's ML ops for full-scale data management. Plans to replicate this success in other plants are progressing. 

▉ Microsoft data and AI technologies leveraged:

• Microsoft Azure tech stack (data storage, data pipeline)
• ML ops (Machine Learning operations)
• Data engineering, architecture, and data science model development