Organizations across the world are looking for ways they too can deploy chatbots in their organization and drive rapid efficiencies. There are a variety of benefits that chatbots can offer – simplified internal workflows, improved customer experience and increased employee productivity. The manufacturing industry is keen to adopt chatbots as well.
Read more: The future of chatbots: statistics and trends
While the use cases we’ve mentioned are quite generic, chatbots do have specific niche applications for the manufacturing industry, that can be quite the game changers for this sector as a whole. Let’s take a quick look at a few plausible scenarios:
SUPPLIES AND INVENTORY
Often, the manufacturing industry suffers losses because supplies are collected even before a need for them is registered. Leveraging a chatbot-based query system allows managers to check the status of parts and materials simply by using a messaging app on their smartphones. They can obtain specific information they’d require in order to process orders successfully.
Chatbots that are integrated with messaging apps allow managers and buyers to order additional supplies when required via the same interface. The bot takes their requests and converts them into a formal order and facilitates successful fulfilment.
ORDER FULFILMENT AND DELIVERY
If products meet desired expectations, delivery is typically the last step of the supply chain management lifecycle. Chatbots facilitate the efficient functioning of this step – managers and buyers can simply ask queries in human language to obtain information about pending orders and current inventory. Further, they can also obtain information about expected delivery dates and status of the shipment.
ALLOW MAINTENANCE CREWS TO CHECK ENVIRONMENT OR WORKPLACE CONDITIONS
We expect that chatbots will soon play an instrumental role in controlling the environmental conditions in manufacturing units. This ensures smooth functioning of operations. A chatbot can align with existing platforms and provide reports on various equipment metrics. Employees, too, can simply ask the chatbot questions on the metrics, and make necessary alterations to the temperature, pressure, etc. to ensure that the equipment is performing at maximum efficiency.
Another advantage of using chatbots over making employees login to separate devices to access these metrics, is that a chatbot can be accessed easily from any mobile device, making timely changes possible.
SUPPLY CHAIN
The manufacturing industry is heavily reliant on a supply chain management system to glean important information about inventory, shipping and optimizing labor and resources. Building supply chain bots will simplify interactions between employees, so they have access to all the data they require, thereby increasing overall productivity and engagement.
These bots can provide real-time status updates on the manufacturing process – including products that have been produced, distributed and returned. Bots also enable you to keep effortless track of purchase orders, in-stock and out-of-stock inventory, produce reports for shipping notifications and more.
DEVELOP A BOT STRATEGY
We’ve only mentioned a few use cases to limit the scope of this blog – however, manufacturers have a plethora of ways they can leverage chatbots to drive business efficiencies. We recommend working with a strategic partner to develop a bot roadmap to discover high-impact use cases within your organization.
Feel free to get in touch with one of our Manufacturing chatbot experts for a free consultation and get a free demo of our AI-Powered Chatbot building platform – BotCore.
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