September 26, 2023
One of the biggest sources of profit loss in the manufacturing industry is factory downtime. The cost of downtime, calculated as the total financial loss a company incurs during these non-productive periods, is a significant expense that is not just about the direct loss of production. It also includes secondary costs such as labor expenses for idle workers, missed deadlines leading to reputational damage, and even penalties for late deliveries. It is also more significant than one might imagine. According to one report, enterprise companies lose about 11% of their yearly turnover to unplanned downtime, amounting to almost $1.5 trillion annually.
Part of the reason this downtime is occurring so frequently (and becoming increasingly common) is because factories lack a centralized and authoritative data source to provide accurate and reliable information for decision making. Industrial operations typically have siloed and disconnected data sitting between their resource planning, maintenance systems, and factory floor monitors. The founders of Allie AI (“Allie”) hope to address this lack of visibility and cohesion by bringing digitization and real-time monitoring to factory data without the need to replace the existing infrastructure.
Allie will provide factory managers and operators with a streamlined dashboard experience that brings industrial data together. Allie functions as a configurable hub that connects to machines and sensors within a factory, creating a “digital layer” on top of existing processes and hardware. The platform stores data securely in the cloud, allowing factories to run root cause analyses and automate maintenance workflows. Allie also leverages artificial intelligence to predict machine failures and offers instructions for preventative maintenance tasks through its chatbot-like assistant.
With 30 of the largest industrial facilities in the Americas already using Allie, manufacturing products totaling $30 billion in annual production, the company has the potential for significant growth.
Author: Roy Friedman, 2023/2024 Articling Student-at-Law
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