3D Systems turns to AI to reduce Additive Manufacturing machine downtime
June 18, 2018
3D Systems, Rock Hill, South Carolina, USA, will employ Artificial Intelligence (AI), from specialist software company Aquant, New York City, New York, USA, to more quickly and accurately diagnose failures in its Additive Manufacturing machines. This is expected to result in greater productivity and uptime across the company’s systems.
Aquant offers an enterprise AI platform, which uses machine learning to learn an individual business’s unique ‘language’ and uses it to maximise equipment uptime. The platform’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms are said to be capable of rapidly converting historical structured and unstructured data into a meaningful knowledge base, providing predictive and actionable service recommendations.
Using Aquant, 3D Systems’ technicians may be able to more quickly diagnose issues with equipment based on reported symptoms, immediately escalate complex problems and better predict the parts required for service calls to customers to enable a ‘first time fix’ for most machine failures.
“Advanced technology is key to continued growth for our business,” stated Mark Hessinger, Vice President of Services, 3D Systems. “By applying Aquant’s AI technology to our service processes, we believe we are taking a major step towards the vision of providing our customers with zero unplanned downtime.”
Shahar Chen, Aquant’s CEO and Co-Founder, commented, “We are honoured 3D Systems, one of the leading 3D printing companies in the world, has decided to partner with us. Our technology will allow 3D Systems to leverage all of the data they’ve gathered over the years to create an immediate improvement in speed and accuracy of issue diagnosis, achieve a significant increase in machine uptime, reduce operational costs and provide fast ROI.”
