Will AI provide instant intelligence to MES? Not immediately. This is what Tech-Clarity’s Rick Franzosa said in his presentation on June 13th at the MES & Industry 4.0 International Summit in Portugal. His talk was titled “No Turning Back: MES/MOM enters the age of AI” and captured plenty of attention. Mark Venables, the Editor-in-Chief of of Connected Technology Solutions (CTS), penned the article “Humans will remain the brain of the MES” reflecting on Rick’s presentation.
Brain of MES Summary
Manufacturers must separate GenAI’s promise from reality, confront cultural resistance, and stay focused on collective intelligence if they want their MES strategy to succeed in the AI era, according to Rick Franzosa. For him, the GenAI conversation is moving dangerously fast, and large sections of the manufacturing world are simply not ready.
GenAI Works, People Are Not Ready
The overall message Rick delivered is that there is a gap between expectations and reality for GenAI. It is coming, but right now manufacturers don’t have the foundational capabilities in place. The order must be people first, then, process, data, and technology.
Cognitive entrenchment, an unconscious belief that the current way of doing things is the only sensible one, stands in the way. The cure is collective intelligence and collaborative decision-making across disciplines.
Data, Agents, and More
Data is a crucial part of the infrastructure for successful AI and MES also. “MES does not fail because the software does not work,” Franzosa explains. “It fails because the data is inconsistent, irrelevant, or siloed. That is not a technology problem. It is a leadership problem.”
Agentic AI is already proving useful, but Franzosa also warned that human-in-the-loop will be important for some time. He does not believe agentic AI will replace MES, but rather that they will evolve together.
Above all, he also believes that human intelligence, creative, imaginative, and interpretative, will remain the brain of MES. Leaders have an opportunity to make better decisions, leveraging their data, AI, MES and people.
Thank You
Mark picked up much of the content and thrust of the original presentation in this 1500-word article, so those of us who were unable to attend can get the benefit of Rick’s well-researched view of where AI and MES intersect and how AI might be part of the evolution of MES. Thank you to Critical Manufacturing for hosting this event, and Mark Venables of Connected Technology Solutions for the article on the presentation.
This is a summary of the CTS article. For the full content, go to the publication’s website.