The data you capture and never use: the first AI quick win
When people ask me where to start with AI, I almost always say the same thing: start by making visible the data you already capture but never use. Before investing in new sensors, look at what’s sleeping in your files.
The data exists, but it serves nothing
In a plant, an indicator is often read in front of the machine, jotted on paper, then re-entered into a spreadsheet. The same information also lives in the ERP, in the quality system, in the maintenance software, but no one can cross-reference it. So each department starts again from its own file, disconnected from the others. You’ve accumulated years of measurements, and you still can’t draw a simple decision from them. It isn’t a problem of data quantity: it’s a problem of visibility.
Connecting what doesn’t talk
AI does two very concrete things. First, connect software that doesn’t communicate, to automatically produce a schedule, an indicator or an alert instead of redoing it by hand every week. Second, build dashboards you generate and modify in plain language. You ask, you adjust by talking, without coding and without staying frozen for two years on a report no one dares touch anymore. Making already-captured data visible solves, on its own, a good share of operational irritants.
The prerequisite you can’t skip
An honest warning: if your base is dirty, we clean first. Putting AI on false data only amplifies the false, faster and with more confidence. And if your ERP is so out of date that everyone falls back on their spreadsheets, that reliability has to be addressed in parallel; otherwise the tool inherits the same shaky data.
Why start here
It’s the quick win par excellence: the data is already there, the hardware investment is low, and the result shows in a few weeks. It’s exactly the kind of first project that creates internal proof and makes teams want to go further, far more effective than a grand program that takes six months before showing anything.
For the full picture, read the guide AI in industry. See also: Capturing know-how before it retires. Wondering where to start? Gauge your AI maturity in 2 minutes, or let’s talk for 20 minutes.