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Today's Topics:
1. Process mining .. digital twins .. Process Intelligence in
Action .. (Stephen Loosley)
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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2024 16:41:15 +0930
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Process mining .. digital twins .. Process
Intelligence in Action ..
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
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What if you asked AI to improve your business?
Firms are building digital twins of themselves for AI to analyse.
By David Braue on Oct 03 2024
https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2024/what-if-you-asked-ai-to-improve-your-business-.html
[ Photo caption: Companies have saved millions after having their business
processes analysed by AI. ]
Digital-twin technology has delivered interactive VR versions of everything
from Greater Western Sydney to the Great Barrier Reef ? but a business
automation expert believes its biggest benefits will come as companies
virtualise operations and use AI to optimise them.
If you work in a company, your role is probably part of a core business process
like customer ordering, manufacturing, human resources, accounts payable,
marketing, and others.
Within most companies, these processes have evolved over time ? and there is
usually extensive duplication as individual employees tweak core processes to
suit ever-changing circumstances and customer requirements.
?Processes are the lifeblood of any organisation,? Dr Lars Reinkemeyer, chief
evangelist with process mining specialist Celonis, told Information Age, ?and
the stunning part is that people always think that the processes are working
fine.?
That, however, is rarely the truth once process experts get their magnifying
glass out: during a previous role at industrial giant Siemens AG, for example,
Reinkemeyer found that the customer order process was being handled in more
than 900,000 different ways across the organisation.
?People think they have a clear understanding about how a process goes but
reality is so much more complex,? Reinkemeyer explained.
?We?re saying ?let?s not talk about what?s supposed to be, but let?s get
insight about what?s really happening.??
Process mining explained
Companies are spending big to get that insight, which over the past 15 years
has turned process mining ? in which companies use analytics tools to better
understand what?s actually going on across the business and adjust it using
business process re-engineering (BPR) ? into a core capability that is expected
to generate $3.5 billion ($US2.46 billion) this year and $53 billion ($US46.39
billion) by 2032.
This insight can be incredibly valuable: global kiwi fruit provider Zespri, for
one, trialled process mining over the past 18 months and has saved $11 million
in just its finance department ? while GE Healthcare increased its free cash
flow by $1.3 billion within one year.
Not every company can expect such good results, however: companies are terrible
at process management, which is why Gartner has predicted that 90 per cent of
organisations will fail to capitalise on process mining through 2026.
By that point, the firm believes, one-quarter of global enterprises will have
invested in process mining platforms ?as a first step to creating a digital
twin for business operations, paving the way to autonomous business operations?
in which generative AI (genAI) systems continuously monitor and refine the way
processes work.
Setting up businesses processes for AI
AI?s ability to rapidly review a situation and evaluate large numbers of
potential actions has made it extraordinarily effective in everything from
playing the game ?go? to optimising a programming routine used in millions of
applications.
As the approach becomes more widespread, businesses will develop a standard
view of processes that can be modelled as digital twins ? not necessarily for
you to explore using VR goggles like a house design, but for a genAI engine to
analyse for efficiency and suggest improvements.
?We?re visualising how your process is happening in reality,? Rinkemeyer
explained. ?It?s not a process model, but a fully high resolution ?MRI? of the
actual process that lets you understand and optimise your process.?
?If you have 9,000 process variants, and your biggest inefficiency is the
number of manual touches in those processes, we can help you step through those
and make production chains more efficient by seeing where the deviations are.?
Such ?process intelligence? ? an evolution of process mining that Rinkemeyer
describes in a new book called Process Intelligence in Action ? will help
companies embrace innovations like ?smart manufacturing? using new techniques
like Causal AI, which models cause and effect relationships and lets managers
ask questions like ?What caused this issue in my manufacturing plant and what
actions can I take to prevent future issues??.
AI use jumps
A recent Rockwell Automation survey of 1,500 manufacturers, including 88 in
Australia and New Zealand ? found 45 per cent are already adopting genAI and
Causal AI, with another 34 per cent expecting they?ll be using the technologies
within two years.
?Digital twins were previously used for physical objects like wind turbines or
building sites, but can now be applied to organisational processes and supply
chains,? said Professor Ganna Pogrebna, executive director of the Charles Sturt
University Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Futures Institute (AICFI) in
Bathurst, who recently co-wrote a Harvard Business Review paper outlining
digital twins? increasing value in strategic decision-making.
Digital twins ?are fast, inexpensive, and advanced, providing managers with
unprecedented flexibility to experiment with changes before implementing them,?
she said, noting AICFI?s recent successes in developing genAI digital twins for
agriculture and planned deployments in sectors like defence and mining.
?CEOs and senior executives can now trial their strategic decision-making prior
to execution, fundamentally rewriting the rule book on strategy design.?
By David Braue
David Braue is an award-winning technology journalist who has covered
Australia?s technology industry since 1995. A lifelong technophile, he has
written and edited content for a broad range of audiences across myriad
consumer and business topics, with a particular focus on managing the
intersection of technological innovation and business transformation. He has
twice won Best IT Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, and was
named Best Technology Journalist at the 2024 Australian Technologies
Competition.
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