You can’t have escaped the talk of Artificial Intelligence recently.
With every major software vendor having some form of AI now embedded in their ERP software, we thought it would be good to give you a quick rundown of what is happening at Infor and the tools which you can access if you are a CloudSuite Industrial user.
What is Artificial Intelligence? Is it the same as Machine Learning?
Before we start this discussion, it’s really worth starting with the fact that Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are not exactly the same. The terms have been used interchangeably for a while, which can sometimes muddy the water!
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, covers a lot of different concepts, one of which is Machine Learning. Other different subsets of AI could cover topics such as robotics and natural language processing etc.
Machine learning, which most of us are talking about, is a subset of AI, which uses large amounts of data to facilitate learning. The more data that you supply the more the machine ‘learns’. The key point here is that Machine Learning needs a huge amount of data, which has to come from somewhere. For tools such as ChatGPT, this is essentially a large scrape of data from Google. However, for your business, you could train AI on the data generated by your business.
Generative AI is yet another subset, and as the name suggests this is the one that can create content. This is based on prompts and could be something like ‘create an image of a marketing manager who is working hard’ which our Marketing Manager Sarah did. You can see the result here!
What does Infor have in terms of AI tools I can use?
There are already several AI tools which you can make use of within Cloudsuite Industrial now.
If you’ve seen our content over on LinkedIn, you’ll know that we’ve shared videos from Infor that show what Combilift is doing in terms of using AI. (You can see one of the case study videos halfway down the linked web page)
There are some great examples and use cases over on Infor’s YouTube channel which show you real businesses that are making use of this technology.
Infor’s AI, which is in use by Combilift, is based on machine learning, which enables them to predict when clients are likely to need a product or service for example. This is the same sort of technology that you see in use at Amazon, where the website recommends you products based on your buying habits.
But there is so much more coming!
Generative AI and more
Generative AI is relatively new to Infor’s Cloudsuite offerings, but it has massive potential for the manufacturing industry. For example, it could be used to generate meaningful descriptions for items, generate those item descriptions in different languages and so much more. The benefit of this will be that you are likely to be able to free up your team members to do more meaningful and impactful work.
It could also be used to look at where there are delays in a manufacturing process. These delays could be further analysed and then used
At the time of writing, the Infor GenAI offering is currently only available to early adopters, however, it will be becoming generally available soon.
If you were at the SyteLine User Conference in May, then you may have seen Amar’s talk which covered this and some of the other exciting new developments too. If you’re a member of the user group you can find that here… There was too much to cover in a quick blog here, but we’ll be covering more of them soon!
This was a really quick tour around AI, and it’s a subject which we’re sure we’ll be talking more about in the future. If you want to have a look at what Infor is offering, then the product page here is a good start, also their YouTube channel gives you a great starting point too. The innovation showcase is here
If you’re thinking about implementing AI in your business, and want to know more; then why not get in touch?