For many people in the manufacturing industry, AI remains abstract. How do you translate it to the shop floor? How do you make it clear what it delivers, how safe it is, what it means for workload and how you can start using it tomorrow?
AI learning communities are growing throughout the Netherlands with support from AIC4NL. AIMM is the AiNed Learning Community for mbo students and professionals in the manufacturing industry, helping them not only understand AI, but more importantly apply it in their work.
"You have to experience it yourself, only then will you really start doing something with AI in your work."
Collaborating in a Learning Community
The Learning Community AIMM is starting five projects this year, in which manufacturing companies, MBOs and AI experts are working together on practical use cases. Starting point: experiencing AI in practice. Use cases are always based on questions from the sector itself. Think of predictive maintenance with AI in a manufacturing company.
The projects organize shared learning teams: small groups with diverse roles and backgrounds working together on an equal basis. Around them is a wider circle of colleagues who participate as advisors or coaches. It takes time to organize this collaboration well, because companies and educational institutions are not always available at the same time. That is why it turns out to be smart to start with parties who already have experience with cooperation in their region or industry.
The insights so far
- Make it concrete: use cases should be immediately recognizable and practical. Human questions, such as safety, workload and yield, prove at least as decisive as technical AI knowledge.
- Keep it small: participants are happy to participate, but only in a manageable period and with limited commitment of (leave) time. The ideal lead time and size of a use case is still being explored within AIMM.
- Do it together: diverse teams add the most value, but require good organization.
- Start with existing networks: parties already accustomed to working together get in faster and provide a jump start.
First results become visible
The theme of the AIMM Learning Community, applying AI in the workplace, is so timely and urgent that companies easily join. Once working in teams on use cases, you see how enthusiastic participants become. They experience fun, learn from each other and discover how AI can be applied in their own practice. That gives confidence for the next steps.
Want to know more about AIMM?
Contact Geert-Jan Peters and Paul Vermeulen, AIMM's national coordinators at ai-communities@kennispactmbobrabant.nl.
