Moving From Custom-Engineered to Configuration-Based Products w/ Henrik Hulgaard

The Manufacturing Executive · 18 Jun 2024 · 37m · Episode 210

AI in practice: one real use of AI described

What this episode covers

Henrik Hulgaard, co-founder and VP of Product Management at Configit, explains how manufacturers can shift from inefficient 'engineer-to-order' processes to scalable 'configure-to-order' models. He details the necessity of establishing a unified 'feature language' to manage product variability across global markets and regulatory constraints. Hulgaard also discusses the synergy between traditional symbolic AI (constraint logic) and generative AI for validating configurations and automating model creation.

AI in practice

Where this conversation describes AI being used to build or deliver a product. Part of the AI in practice tracker.

Engineering & simulation

The company is using AI to create initial configuration models by analyzing product brochures, data sheets, and PDFs to define feature relationships, reducing the manual effort required to build these models from scratch.

“You can basically take product, brochure, product, data sheets, Excel, PDFs, whatever, give it to an AI and ask it to create a configuration model based on that data. And it can do a pretty amazing job at that.”

Henrik Hulgaard · Hear it at 29:43

Mentioned

Companies
Configit, Jaguar Land Rover, John Deere, CNH, Philips, Gorilla 76, Volvo Buses, Cornaflex

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