“So, you go back and, say, ‘Our manufacturing plant was okay and there was nothing wrong with the torque.’ Then, when was this bumper manufactured and by which supplier? We can trace it back to the supply chain, all the way through.”
And once the visibility is in place, the entire AI-powered manufacturing system can autonomously — or semi-autonomously — take action to correct the problem. “That’s the euphoria you get from that,” Iyengar said.
Oshkosh isn’t ready to update everything to AI right away, however. Even once Oshkosh’s factories are brought into the industrial AI era — it is starting the upgrades this year — all the other companies in the supply chain have to come on board as well. The bigger suppliers are well on their way to full digitization and visibility, but some of the smaller players face a bigger challenge.
