Will I need fewer people?
It's the question I get asked in almost every plant. Sometimes in the first meeting, carefully worded, with management in the room. Sometimes in the corridor, bluntly, once management has left: will I need fewer people?
Sebastian J. Brau's blog
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Both versions deserve the same answer, and it starts by admitting that AI can do the same work with fewer people. That's the obvious path, and the first one to show up in any spreadsheet.
But there is another path. AI can help the operator who fills in quality reports by hand today catch the defect before the customer does. It can help the junior technician on call on a Sunday afternoon repair like the veteran, because the memory of every past intervention is right there. It can help the planner stop rebuilding the plan every time an email brings a delay, and start anticipating it.
That second path doesn't shrink the workforce. It raises the bar for the whole plant. And a higher bar can only be held by people who know the process.
Adjusting headcount is a legitimate management decision. Losing the knowledge of the person who knows why the kiln behaves differently in winter, or what a machine sounds like before it fails, is something else. That knowledge isn't in any ERP. It lives in people, and when they leave, it leaves with them.
The factories that win this decade will be the ones that use AI to make their people perform like the best in their industry. That's what the book is about, and why its subtitle reads: why factories with people will win.
IRIS is out on Monday, September 28. You can start reading it at iris-playbook.com.