Qlik: AI & Moving The Manufacturing Production Line Forward

Hello James, please introduce yourself and your role.  

As Qlik’s Chief Strategy Officer, I oversee Qlik’s corporate strategy, including the company’s vision for the future, strategic planning, market development and intelligence, as well as corporate sustainability and social responsibility.

I was previously Senior Vice President of Product Marketing and then Chief Product Officer before moving into my current role. 

What led you to this industry? 

My degree in Business Studies, which included two internships, gave me a good foundation and understanding of the industry.

After graduating, I worked at PwC in their products group before moving on to Cartesis, Business Objects and SAP.

I have always been interested in driving innovation through data insights to make key decisions. 

What is Qlik? 

Qlik, with the recent addition of Talend, delivers an industry-leading portfolio of cloud solutions for data integration, data quality, AI and analytics.

This includes advancements in real-time data, machine learning and automation.

Todays most successful organisations are investing to make sense of the increasing volume and variety of data they now have access to.

The challenge is to effectively integrate, analyse and act on the data while ensuring its trustworthiness.

With more than 40,000 active customers in over 100 countries, Qlik’s solutions work with virtually any data source, target, architecture, or methodology, to ensure customers have the data they need, whenever they need it. 

Why has the manufacturing industry been so slow to adopt AI? 

As with every industry, there are leaders who have embraced new technology like AI, and those that have been more cautious – and in many cases this is because of a lack of accessible data.

In the case of manufacturing, information is often localised to a production line or specific team.

In many cases, these manual processes and legacy IT systems are part of a complex ecosystem of supply chains, and can be slow to adapt to AI and other advanced technology.

Now, the manufacturing industry is beginning to see the benefits of using AI to monitor and improve production line efficiency, boost quality control and make more informed decisions - like planning for increased staffing during busy times.

What potential does AI have? 

AI has huge power to help businesses – in the manufacturing industry and beyond – to make better, faster and more informed decisions, streamline operations, predict workforce demand and manage raw materials.

Generative AI models and AI predictions can offer a competitive advantage – by helping speed up processes, automate data delivery, power customer interactions through AI assistants, help interpret and summarise findings and more.

The real challenge is making sure businesses can adopt AI technology successfully, and overcome any risk and trust concerns.

AI capabilities are only successful when they are underpinned by reliable, trustworthy data – and this is where Qlik comes in, to help organisations to manage risk, embrace complexity and scale the impact of AI across the business.

Tell us about some of your partnerships

Qlik supports Airbus, a leading designer and manufacturer of commercial aircrafts.

The company uses Qlik’s technology  to pull together information from across different aircraft production programmes, with data from over 15 sources.

Having one aligned programme enabled Airbus to accelerate its aircraft production.

The company also created an intuitive user interface, which meant the need for manual coding was eliminated, and data was synchronised and consolidated across major databases and warehouses.   

Qlik also works with HARMAN, the consumer technology company creating everything from speakers to gaming equipment.

Qlik’s technology gives HARMAN access to much-needed real-time data to make decisions around fluctuation demand, supply chains and manufacturing to keep the business running smoothly - and integrating AI into this process is allowing the business to benefit from AI-powered recommendations and predictions.

A final example, Qlik works with Hitachi Omika Works to build a trusted data foundation for its modern supply chain.

Hitachi is working with Qlik to meet complex data analytics requirements, supporting risk analysis and data visualisation of information across the entire supply chain.

The Hitachi team can now analyse and draw insights from data, enabling better risk analysis while eliminating ambiguity for faster organisational decision-making.

Tell us about your 2024 plans and predictions

At the end of 2023, Qik launched Staige, its investment strategy to help customers innovate faster and more confidently with AI.

In 2024, we will continue to develop this, with the goal of supporting customers to better manage, train, deliver and leverage data with trust and control, by offering solutions enhanced with traditional AI and generative AI. 

We want to help customers turn their AI strategy into a reality, by getting the right data foundation in place to help find new answers and insights from their data – both structured and unstructured.  

2024 will undoubtedly by dominated by AI adoption, and we also want business to be able to use the technology ethically and effectively.

This is why we launched our AI Council, which allows us to help customers to ethically embrace AI and stay at the forefront of regulation an dlaws that come into affect around the technology this year.

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