Valentine’s Day is in two weeks, and the traditional gifts are already flying off store shelves: jewelry, watches, colognes, cards, and boxes and boxes of chocolate. All thoughtful, personal gifts—yet the process of manufacturing them is anything but warm and fuzzy.
Production lines around the world have been busy churning out consumer goods at scale, just as they do for every holiday season. Manufacturing companies run on unforgiving production and delivery schedules, and every interruption on the line is time and money wasted. If you can shave even two minutes off machine downtime, that can be worth thousands of dollars.
That’s where our new, AI-powered maintenance advisor can help.
Imagine you’re a maintenance technician working on a production line, and you get an alert that one of the machines has stopped working. Often, these alerts come in the form of codes, such as “IHT” or “PDE.” If you’re an experienced technician, you know that this means a measured parameter has fallen outside the acceptable range. But which parameter? And what range?
“As we add more agents for more tasks, they’ll ultimately help automate end-to-end processes as we move into the future.”
If the issue isn’t immediately apparent when you examine the machine, you’d have to sift through hundreds of pages of repair manuals and documentation to diagnose the problem. Oracle’s maintenance advisor AI agent can retrieve all of this information in seconds from your company’s own manuals, past repairs, and documentation for that exact machine, and it can answer your questions in plain language.
For example, if the fault is on a machine used to mill aluminum molds for pouring those Valentine’s Day chocolates, the technician can ask, Has this machine failed previously? What was the resolution? and the maintenance advisor will retrieve the answer.
The maintenance advisor can also advise the technician how to repair the problem based on the machine’s documentation, as well as on past experiences with this particular machine in this particular factory. That’s the brilliant thing about AI agents: they learn from experience, the same way a human would.
You see, the maintenance advisor AI agent is more than a knowledge base. This agent actively works within the context of your business processes and understands the data in your ERP system. It won’t just suggest how to fix a machine based on the manual and its repair history, it knows the specific machine’s details and can check if replacement parts are still under warranty in the SCM system. This means it can recommend the best repair solution and help you get warranty credit for the replacement, saving time and reducing costs. It’s not just providing answers—it’s providing answers while driving smarter, more efficient actions by combining company data, policies, and processes.
Learn more about Oracle AI for supply chain management.
The maintenance advisor is one of many new AI agents we’ve recently announced. Examples of other agents include a claims policy advisor, sustainability policy advisor, quality inspection advisor, material handling advisor, and more.
Like the maintenance advisor, people can talk conversationally with these AI-powered agents, letting the agent guide them through tasks, answer complex questions, and provide relevant insights. Embedded directly within Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM workflows, these agents use company-specific data to help improve decision-making and productivity. As we add more agents for more tasks, they’ll ultimately help automate end-to-end processes as we move into the future.
AI agents in Oracle Cloud SCM are available now, and they offer a user experience that’s far superior to customized manufacturing execution systems. Oracle Cloud SCM provides an easy-to-use, consumer-grade interface that works on mobile devices, so employees always have AI agents in the palm of their hands. It could even eliminate the need for legacy manufacturing execution systems, which could mean no more clunky interfaces or “PDE” codes.
Getting started is easy—contact your Oracle representative to take the first steps to transform your supply chain and manufacturing operations.
Discover how AI can help manufacturers to drive smarter operations.
Learn how AI agents built into Oracle Cloud SCM help companies gain more efficiency in their supply chains.