AI Action Plan Kicks off with “Winning the AI Race” Summit
The U.S. unveiled its first AI Action Plan with the “Winning the AI Race” All-In Summit. The AI Action Plan focuses on a few core elements to ensure the U.S. leads the world with artificial intelligence. It boils down to accelerating AI innovation, building supporting infrastructure, and leading global AI policy and security.
Why does leading the AI race matter? Leading in AI is the equivalent of an arms race as it will result in military and economic advantages. AI will provide geopolitical dominance and enable strategy setting. It must be fast, scale rapidly, and thought about in decades, not months or quarters. These same concepts will trickle down to companies. Whoever leads in AI will leave their competitors in the dust with speed, rapid innovation, and profit.
What is In the AI Action Plan?
The AI Action Plan sets the direction for the future of artificial intelligence. From a business standpoint, the keys include the following:
- Focus on innovation: The plan encourages public-private partnerships, free access to information (open-source, open-weight), AI Centers of Excellence to spur innovation, building AI scientific capacity and AI skill development, and supporting the process with AI Workforce Research Hubs.
- Accelerating federal permitting: Since AI requires an abundance of energy, a critical aspect of achieving AI success is fast-tracking zoning and regulatory approvals for AI-capable data centers, semiconductor fabs, and related infrastructure. It also enabled federal use of lands and supported grid upgrades and energy access.
- Leading AI technology stack: Part of leading in AI is to be considered the base, similar to how we ask for a “Kleenex” instead of a tissue. Thus, an executive order was issue and the summit discussed the importance of positioning the U.S. tech stack as the standard for the world to use.
Implications for Manufacturing & Supply Chain
AI will transform manufacturing and supply chain.
The AI Action Plan will have two high-level impacts. From a demand point-of-view, it will spur mining, manufacturing, and building like never seen in recent history. If companies and individuals want to take advantage of the opportunities, they will prepare for success, enable their ability to scale and create a culture of innovation. In addition, there is no time to delay to roll out a SIOP (Sales Inventory Operations Planning) process as predicting sales forecasts and demand pattern changes will be of paramount importance and translating these forecasts into capacity plans and operational strategies to scale up and serve customers profitably and successfully will determine the winners for decades to come. Companies that want to take advantage of the AI boom will prepare, continuously assess and look for opportunities with supply chain evolutions with SIOP and predictive planning strategies, build the talent pipeline, and scale up.
From an internal impacts point-of-view, artificial intelligence has the potential to transform businesses. Review our article, Using AI to Drive Productivity, Profitability and Performance, to gain ideas and strategies to leverage AI to speed up progress, streamline processes, and increase efficiencies and reduce waste. Manufacturers can automate standard tasks relatively easily with AI. Beyond that, they can predict, summarize, address complex tasks and provide suggestions as to how to handle disruptions. For example, an industrial manufacturer automated simple order processing and provided exception alerts for Customer Service to review, thereby reducing processing time by 90% and better serving customers. In another example of an aerospace manufacturer, they utilized autonomous vehicles to deliver materials and parts on the floor, better serving operations with timely deliveries and increasing margins. And, finally, a building products manufacturer utilized artificial intelligence to roll out an inventory optimization program, improving customer service levels while reducing inventory by several million dollars, thereby freeing up cash flow.
If you are interested in reading more on this topic:
Advanced Planning Strategies to Optimize Manufacturing Success