Several pro engineers share their experiences with digital transformation and AI.
Generative AI has opened up new possibilities for engineers to advance digital transformation at their companies. These AI-enhanced possibilities include:
- Working as an engineering assistant.
- Engaging in more wide-ranging problem-solving with less effort and elapsed time.
- Automating business workflows more quickly and at a lower cost.
- Developing software more rapidly and with less effort.
Many engineers are walking along their personal digital transformation path. Sensors and software have replaced printed log books for data acquisition. Online systems have replaced file folders for data management. Excel has replaced paper worksheets. Digital displays have replaced large corkboards or walls decorated with many sticky notes. Data analytics became feasible once companies transformed most of their data into digital datastores.
These examples of how engineers use generative AI to drive value from digital transformation should trigger specific ideas for you to pursue.
Generative AI as an engineering assistant
Increasingly capable computers and improved application software have digitally transformed the work of engineers. Engineers access a myriad of data from many sources. It needs to be integrated, cleansed and analyzed to create value from all this mostly digital data. That work can be tedious and error-prone.
Generative AI has opened up new possibilities for engineers to view AI as an automated engineering assistant. Now, engineers can look more widely for data and simulate more possible solutions while reducing effort and the risk of errors.
“Strive to treat AI as an assistant and not simply as a new tool,” said Mel Head, a retired chemical engineer with a computing background who worked at Honeywell. “We still need to review the AI output before using it exactly as we would with a human assistant.”
On-target search
Once upon a time, engineers relied on printed reference texts for much of their work. Engineers have relied on Google’s digital search results like everyone else for many years. Search has brought much of the information engineers need for their work to their fingertips. When did engineers last visit a reference library or buy an engineering textbook?
Generative AI offers the ability to avoid the effort of sifting through Google’s digital search results by summarizing the available information and focusing on what’s most important. That AI ability assures engineers that nothing significant has been missed while reducing their effort.
“Using GPT-4o or Perplexity for search has pretty much supplanted Google searches for me. Rather than Google something and get a million links and many ads to sort through, GPT-4o and Perplexity give me well-formed and cited answers, said Jeff Uhlich, Principal Consultant at Obleeq Solutions. “They’re not always 100% accurate, but they are more useful than Google results.”
Powerful data analytics
Engineers have always analyzed data. First, slide rules, then calculators and then Excel. Each represented a significant advance for engineers.
In digitally transformed businesses, generative AI can analyze and summarize vast volumes of data to produce meaningful tables and impressive charts. That AI functionality improves the quality of reports while reducing engineers’ effort.
“I use Microsoft Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) and Power Query M to analyze oil and natural gas production data. AI tools like OpenAI ChatGPT and Microsoft CoPilot provide code snippets and links to reference material to confirm syntax details,” said Mark Perrin, petroleum engineer and VP at TriAcc Group. “The bottom line is that these AI tools save me a lot of time when solving client data problems.”
More capable business workflows
Every business operates with many workflows. Engineers often play a significant role in adapting workflows to changing business conditions or capturing the value of new technology.
Digital transformation creates an opportunity to incorporate more digital data into automated workflows. Then, generative AI can add more sophisticated decision-making to these workflows.
“With platforms like Zapier and Make to automate my workflows, AirTable to quickly develop low-code apps, and Notion to integrate diverse office data, I’ve streamlined and automated a plethora of business operations,” says Alan Mourgues, consulting reservoir engineer and founder at CrowdField. “From generating content for blogs and websites to data analysis, our business processes are fluid, responsive to business changes and efficient.
Faster software development
Developers and engineers have handcrafted digital software since the invention of computers. This work has been expensive, tedious and error-prone.
More recently, sophisticated integrated software development environments (IDE) and the wide availability of function-rich open-source software libraries have greatly improved developer productivity.
The advent of generative AI has improved developer productivity further by generating significant amounts of source code based on a comparatively short prompt. These advances will help software developers meet the voracious software appetite of engineers and our society more generally.
“ChatGPT is a powerful tool for engineers to develop software rapidly,” says Damien Hocking, CTO at Madala Software. “AI tools don’t give you a perfect solution, but it’s fantastic as a flying start that saves hours of grunt work.”
Digital research organization
Engineers are constantly involved in improving production performance and designing new products. That work includes significant research into new materials, automation and process advances. Digitally organizing the results of this work has been difficult. Document management systems and apps like Microsoft Notes have helped. When project teams collaborate, apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams preserve the discussion well.
Generative AI adds the ability to summarize and prioritize research results digitally. That saves engineers vast amounts of reading time.
“I’ve started replacing my extensive paper notes with a digital workflow on a tablet using the Nebo app,” said Brad Henrie, quality and process engineer at Sealweld Corporation. “My notes combine sketches, flowcharts, text, and calculations, so I can’t achieve the same results with a word processor. Nebo performs simple arithmetic, converts my handwritten text to computer-readable text and is searchable.”
Generative AI increases engineers’ productivity in a digitally transformed business without compromising quality or adding risk.
