By Linsey Billings
Watson and Einstein come together on a quest to spread artificial intelligence across new boundaries. IBM’s Watson can take real-time data such as weather updates and exchange that information with Salesforce’s Einstein who will then share this information with its affected customers. An example given by Marc Benioff during a CNBC interview on Monday, was if a halestorm was taking effect later that day in a certain region, Watson would provide Salesforce with real time weather alerts so that Salesforce could then notify its affected policyholders to bring their cars in that afternoon.
Benefit
How this affects the manufacturing industry relates to the evolution and advancement of IoT. Manufacturers can take advantage of the combined technologies of IoT and AI to gain real-time insights into how their industrial equipment is currently operating. For example, Watson can identify predictive maintenance alerts and share this information with Salesforce who will use its Service cloud to immediately notify a field service technician or engineer who can deploy the correct resources and avoid equipment failure.
Another example is around Supply Chain management and providing cross-channel visibility into inventories which can lead to supply optimization and cost reduction. Coca-Cola, one of the world’s largest CPG companies, uses Salesforce’s partnership of Watson and Einstein to automatically look at the inventory levels in the refrigerators of their major retailers. This data is then used by the Service Cloud to trigger notifications to their delivery unit to ship those specific products to the identified retailers.
Manufacturing conglomerate, General Electric, states in their State of Manufacturing 2017 Outlook blog that they believe the predominant theme for manufacturers in the year of 2017 is around making manufacturing more smart, efficient, and innovative. They highlight data-driven manufacturing as a key to attaining success in the new year. By combining the capabilities of Watson, Einstein, and IoT, manufacturers can accelerate their growth in new ways by having real-time insights into the world around them and being able to react quickly to rise above their competitors.
Resources:
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/06/ibm-and-salesforce-shake-hands-on-artificial-intelligence.html
https://www.ge.com/digital/blog/state-manufacturing-2017-outlook
http://diginomica.com/2017/03/07/watson-meet-einstein-relatively-elementary-ai-alliance/
http://diginomica.com/2017/03/07/salesforce-captures-the-limits-of-ai-in-a-coca-cola-cooler/