A large manufacturing company saw an opportunity to create greater efficiency and strengthen its competitive position through the application of AI. Having partnered successfully with Carpedia on previous initiatives, the owner turned to the team to identify where AI could deliver meaningful operational value, what solutions could be developed, and what impact those solutions could have on business performance.
Carpedia consultants began with a Discovery Phase to evaluate where AI could drive the greatest improvement across cost, cycle time, error reduction, and customer service, with a specific focus on opportunities within the Engineering Department.
To establish a practical path forward, Carpedia conducted a detailed assessment of the company’s data architecture and observed day-to-day engineering workflows firsthand. This approach ensured recommendations were grounded not only in technical possibilities, but in the realities of how work was actually performed.
Carpedia identified 5 initiatives that would bring the greatest return to the company:
- Improve the speed and accuracy of the quoting system
- Refine the product selection process
- Automate information gathering processes
- Reduce critical errors
- Build a cost estimation tool
Carpedia collaborated with their AI partner to determine the cost and development time for potential AI solutions. In some cases, an off-the-shelf solution existed. In others, custom AI models needed to be developed. Carpedia identified at least one initiative that could be executed with a less costly and more quickly developed tool using a non-AI technology, allowing for cost effective results without compromising on quality.
Outcomes of Discovery Phase included:
- Discovery of available data and insights
- Prioritization and cost optimization of proposed solutions
- Establishment of capacity opportunity for each solution, ranging from 7% to 22%
- Projection of ROI at 3:1
- Generation of opportunity to provide increased flexibility for the department and reduced dependency on third party contractors
- Identification of solutions for expediting the onboarding process of new engineers
- Determination that error rate would be reduced (rate of reduction to be determined in phase 2)
Carpedia and the client moved into the next phase of the analysis, a proof of concept for the select initiatives determined by the client.
