Factories have witnessed a sea change in the past three decades. The 80s and 90s witnessed Industrial Automation and robots came to the forefront. During the past decade, multiple game-changing technologies are reshaping the factories. Machine Learning, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Virtual Reality (VR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are fundamentally alerting the way factories work. Their impact is not limited to manufacturing, they are influencing almost every industry. This article tries to explain Machine Learning and its significance in the world of manufacturing.
First, let’s try and explain Machine Learning. Simply put, it refers to algorithms improving on their own. Normally, when a program is written, it is expected to deliver a prespecified output for a given set of inputs. Over time, they identify patterns and “learn” to generate an output corresponding to a different set of inputs. In cases, algorithms learn to respond to new situations, e.g. algorithms on the trading floor “learn” to respond to different market situations. Machine Learning can be implemented through Decision Tree Learning, Association Rule Learning, Artificial Neural Networks etc.
