What is your personal background?
I have been working in Parmalat, a company of the Lactalis group, since 2020 and now I hold the role of Industrial Operational Excellence Manager. My daily job is to guide the strategy of Operational Excellence across the factories, working both on production processes both on supporting processes (scheduling and procurement) in a cross-functional perspective.
Before joining Parmalat I worked for other multinational food corporations, always in the Operation field, where I was able to experience all the typical aspects of the industrial world (Safety, Quality, Costs, People Management, Project Management …)
I studied Mathematics at the University of Parma where I obtained both the BSc and the MSc, in particular during the MSc I focused my attention on probability and statistics and I did my thesis work studying a stochastic process in the industrial field.
What is your organization’s role in knowlEdge?
Parmalat is one of the three industries participating in the project as a demonstrator.
The role is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the tools provided by the platform in solving real problems in the manufacturing world. The goal is not limited to show the ability of knowledge to solve specific problems, but we want to demonstrate the entire architecture and user experience of the platform. Pilot companies therefore have the role of “first customers” of the platform.
What fascinates you about Artificial Intelligence for manufacturing?
What fascinates me most about Artificial Intelligence applied to industry is its collaborative aspect. That is, an artificial intelligence that does not oppose to the human component, but integrates and supports it. This is one of the key elements of the transition to Industry 5.0 of which knowlEdge perfectly embraces the themes.
What are your expectations in knowlEdge?
I expect to see the birth of a platform that allows easy adoption of AI tools, that changes the business model of how AI solutions are proposed to the company today. I therefore expect a modular solution, easy to adopt and easily scalable. And last but not least, we expect to find a really useful tool for the problems we have brought to the consortium.
Which target groups can benefit from knowlEdge?
The manufacturing world can really benefit from knowlEdge, especially in more operational roles, in which is essential making decisions in short time.
This kind of field-decision-making process is nowadays based mainly on human knowledge and experience, it is crucial to improve tools that reinforce, support and standardize this process.
I think it can also be an excellent opportunity for solution providers who can reach companies in a much more direct way and make a simpler problem-solution match.
What is your vision beyond knowlEdge?
Beyond knowlEdge, the goal is to try to adopt AI solutions in a more complete and operational way on industrial processes, also working on a cultural change that facilitates the adoption of these tools.
For this reason, the concept of Human-AI collaboration is fundamental, as is working on the ease of use of these tools. In recent months we have been seeing how AI-based tools that are very simple to use (ChatGPT, Midjourney…) have immediately entered in everyday life, I hope that the same approach will be used for AI applications in manufacturing.