German luxury car maker, Mercedes-Benz AG is testing ChatGPT in production to accelerate the use of intelligent tools in the MO360 digital production ecosystem, which the company first introduced in 2020. To optimise the analysis of production data like quality management, ChatGPT will now support production employees as a universal, voice-based interface, it said in a July 6 press release.
The automaker says an automated analysis tool enables intelligent networking of quality data from development, customer experience and production. The potential malfunctions can be identified and analysed as quickly as possible. ChatGPT can additionally support quality engineers in identifying faults by clustering data. With the help of ChatGPT, complex evaluation and presentations of production-relevant data and quality management is significantly simplified for employees. Instead of complex programming functions, queries are steered in a dialogue, so that not only engineers but also employees without prior programming knowledge can have the necessary data at their disposal.
The employees use Microsoft AI for real-time processing of production data, which remains the MO360 Data Platform. Questions are narrowed down further and further in the digital evaluation process in dialogue with the chatbot until a new level of detail is reached. The overview of the daily production planning can be checked in real-time and flexibly adjusted if necessary. At this point, ChatGPT is intended to support strategic decision-making for the entire production chain within the shortest possible time. Due to the democratisation of all relevant data, every employee can use ChatGPT to make quick evaluations and derive the next steps within the scope of his or her field of work.
Significance: Mercedes-Benz says another area of focus of integrating ChatGPT in production is to provide employees worldwide with an AI-based digital contact person. Production employees communicate through MO360 via a self-service portal that is available on any company device - including tablets, smartphones and laptops. The MO360 Support Bot is designed to take queries and clarify them in dialogue with the employees.
GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer, and behind this are sophisticated neural networks that have been trained to create texts, so-called large language models. The system answers questions, creates or summarises texts, can translate and even generate program code.
