Georgia-Pacific
Assembly Line
What Georgia-Pacific Is Doing With Causal AI Is Remarkable
Using words to describe Causal AI only takes you so far. Seeing the layers of knowledge modeled in a knowledge graph is more powerful. The following figure helps demonstrate the depth of causality that is modeled with these systems. For GP, softness is one of 12 critical product attributes for any of their paper products. Softness itself has 10 attributes called Influencing Attributes (IA) that can affect the Softness of the product. Further, each Influencing Attribute has many items that can affect them. BULK is one of those Influencing Attributes. But BULK, in turn, has many “Conditional Attributes” that affect it.
Georgia-Pacific used technology from Parabole.ai to build its Causal AI solution, and Vassar Labs built the interface. Before working with GP, Parabole.ai provided solutions for the financial industry.
GP’s goal was to see whether Causal AI could combine subject matter experts’ tacit knowledge with production data to make more intelligent and automated decisions. They demonstrated a 10X increase in touchless order throughput. Some order management errors that used to take days to resolve were now resolved in seconds. Of course, getting a promise right is vital. However, good customer service also demands quick answers to customers’ order inquiries.
‘Revolutionary’ digital printing technology uptake expected to accelerate for packaging
The whir of a digital inkjet printer that spits out crisp, vibrant documents in mere seconds is a familiar reference to most Americans. Just as this innovation transformed home and office printing when it replaced legacy tools like the dot matrix printer, industrial-scale digital inkjet technology is now transforming the packaging space. Digital printing, on the other hand, does not rely on plates. Designers develop the desired image in a computer program and send the digital file to the inkjet mechanism that sprays ink droplets directly onto the packaging medium.
“Print is the traditional bottleneck in a converting facility, and if you remove that bottleneck you can streamline both upstream and downstream processes,” Wettersten said. “That’s where transformation begins to occur with digital printing, aligning systems and workflow and enabling new capabilities around responsiveness and flexibility.”
“What we’re seeing today is large corrugated companies starting to invest in web presses to totally change workflow,” he said. “The impact on lead times is rather eye-opening: You can take conventional lead times of 18 to 20 days for repeat orders down to fewer than five days on a digital press.”