How AI Keeps Factories Running
Whenever vehicle production equipment fails at a BMW Group plant, every minute counts. The maintenance team must work quickly to identify and resolve the cause of the fault. Now, employees can ask the new digital AI assistant, “Factory Genius”, for help: It can suggest solutions for the specific system problem within seconds, reducing the time required for error diagnosis to a minimum. “AI applications have become an integral part of modern production systems and are a key element of the BMW Group’s digital transformation. Factory Genius is an example of how generative AI, in particular, can streamline operations for everyone involved and enhance economic efficiency,” says Michael Ströbel, head of Process Management and Digitalisation, Order to Delivery at the BMW Group. But how exactly does the digital assistant, recently launched in its initial development phase, support maintenance staff?
Knowledge discovery tool
The tool essentially works like a search engine, quickly filtering relevant answers to specific user queries from vast amount of data and user reports. However, this search function does not draw content and information from internet, but from equipment manuals, quality data, internal fault reports and planning documents it was previously trained on. To keep the data management system up to date, it is regularly fed with new knowledge – for example, in the form of daily updated shift-log data.
By integrating a Large Language Model, similar to those used in chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini, Factory Genius is also able to understand language: The software can search data for relevant content within the appropriate linguistic context, providing more accurate results than a conventional search engine. In addition to displaying the top matches with links to sources, the assistant can also summarise the maintenance instructions found through contextual search in just a few sentences, if preferred. The user can then ask questions in a chat.
