The assembly lines at GE Appliances' cooking appliance plant in LaFayette, Ga., have camera systems trained to detect errors.
Julie Holder for NPR
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LAFAYETTE, Ga. — Inside Roper Corp., a GE Appliances-owned plant in rural northwest Georgia, autonomous vehicles deliver parts to assembly lines. Robots attach glass cooktops to metal frames. And deployed throughout are AI-powered cameras and sensors, trained to catch mistakes.
"We have these things everywhere out here," says Tony Gabbert, the plant's director of manufacturing operations.
If a camera spots an anomaly — the wrong gasket installed on an oven, for example — the system will shut that part of the line down and start playing loud music.
"If you hear AC/DC, you know to come running down here," says Gabbert. "The quicker we know what the problem is, the quicker we can fix it."
Tony Gabbert is the plant's director of manufacturing operations. He says AI-powered quality control systems are critical to ensuring they catch errors early and solve them quickly.
Julie Holder for NPR
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Today, American factories are under extraordinary pressure to perform perfectly. They must turn out flawless products, efficiently, in order to compete with imports from rivals overseas. It used to be up to people to achieve good results. Now, manufacturers are leaning heavily into advanced technology and artificial intelligence to up their game.
The goal at GE Appliances has always been to minimize errors, equipment downtime and scrap — and to ensure every appliance produced passes inspection and gets sent out to the consumer, problem-free.
Now, with AI bringing its analytical prowess to troubleshooting, perfection seems tantalizingly within reach.
"We're not shooting for 97. We want to run 100 every day," says Gabbert, referring to a performance metric used in manufacturing.
Already, the gains made are significant. GE Appliances' vice president of manufacturing, Bill Good, estimates the company saves between $1.5 million and $2 million per year with every percentage point of improvement.
Using AI's analytical skills to help identify and troubleshoot problems, GE Appliances feels closer to minimizing errors down to zero.
Julie Holder for NPR
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GE Appliances has worked on collecting data through cameras and sensors for more than a decade. With millions of lines of data now generated every day, the company's data platform Brilliant Factory can provide a real-time view into how each of its nine major appliance plants is running, down to the workstation.
That means from company headquarters in Louisville, Ky., Good can see which machines are down and why, how many appliances are going to the repair bay and why, which parts are getting scrapped and how much that scrap is costing the company.
