Empowering the next-generation industrial operator with generative AI (MFG201)
Georgia Pacific's Journey to Leverage Gen to Improve Operator Knowledge Retention
Overview
Georgia Pacific (GP) is a large manufacturing company with over 30,000 employees and 140 facilities across North America.
GP has faced challenges with knowledge loss due to talent attrition and high turnover, especially as experienced operators retire.
To address this issue, GP has leveraged generative AI (Gen) and other AI/ML technologies to build solutions that empower their operators and retain critical knowledge.
Key Lessons Learned
Focus on high-value problems: GP deliberately focused on solving problems that have a significant impact on their business, such as those related to environmental health & safety, productivity, and quality.
Embrace experimental discovery over grand plans: GP found that starting small, deploying quickly, and learning/iterating is more effective than extensive upfront planning.
Ensure zero hallucination: GP partnered closely with AWS to build models and solutions that prioritize accurate, trustworthy information over potential "fake news" that could lead to dangerous decisions.
Integrate AI with legacy equipment: GP has successfully integrated AI/ML models to control and optimize the operation of their large, complex manufacturing equipment.
The Operator Assistant Solution
GP began this journey in mid-2023, collaborating with AWS to build an "Operator Assistant" solution powered by Gen.
The Operator Assistant provides structured and unstructured data-driven responses to help operators troubleshoot issues, access best practices, and make decisions.
Key capabilities include:
Automated alerts and issue detection to proactively notify operators of problems.
Recommended actions and step-by-step guidance based on the detected issue.
Ability to capture and preserve tribal knowledge through a "docgen" (document generation) process.
The solution has been scaled to over 20 production instances across GP's facilities.
The Partnership with AWS
GP views AWS as a true partner, not just a vendor. The relationship is based on mutual benefit, intellectual honesty, and leveraging comparative advantage.
AWS has provided access to emerging technologies (like Bedrock) and technical expertise through groups like the Gen Innovation Center and ProServe.
The collaborative, "one team" approach has been critical to the success of this initiative.
Next Steps
Continuing to scale the Operator Assistant solution across more GP facilities.
Further integrating the Operator Assistant with other AI/ML models and systems to provide a more holistic, seamless experience for operators.
Exploring additional use cases where Gen and other AI/ML technologies can drive value for GP's business and their people.
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