AI already is being used in some areas of process improvement, and the usage of this technology — including generative AI — promises to grow. That’s because it can perform tasks faster and much less expensively than humans alone. But it will never fully replace people — and that poses management challenges.
Most manufacturing and service operations repeat in one way or another, which provides the opportunity to experiment, learn, and continuously improve their underlying processes. Until recently, the methods for making these processes better and better were performed by human experts. That is rapidly changing thanks to artificial intelligence tools, including generative AI, that can perform tasks faster and much less expensively than humans alone.
