Artificial intelligence (AI) can enable a new era in the digital transformation journey, offering tremendous potential to transform industries for greater efficiency, sustainability and workforce engagement. Even though the impact of AI applications in manufacturing and value chains is known, the full opportunity from their deployment is still to be uncovered due to a number of organizational and technical roadblocks. Recognizing this need, the World Economic Forum’s Platform for Shaping the Future of Advanced Manufacturing and Value Chains and Platform for Shaping the Future of Technology Governance: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, together with the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Türkiye, convened industry, technology and academic experts to shed light on these challenges and propose a step-by-step approach to overcome them.

This white paper presents the benefits that can be achieved through industrial AI applications in operational performance, sustainability and workforce augmentation as well as six main barriers hindering their adoption at scale. It also highlights over 20 successful AI applications implemented by leading manufacturers and an example of a step-by-step approach to implementing scalable AI applications in manufacturing and supply chains.