Polish companies do not invest in modern technologies
Polish companies are not investing in modern technologies. According to the latest Eurostat report. Artificial intelligence was used by only 4% of Polish companies. Experts, however, are under no illusions – only those companies that will bet in the near future m.in. on the industrial Internet of Things will be successful on the market.
Artificial intelligence has a huge impact on the development of industry. Today we are already talking about the fourth industrial revolution. Industry 4.0), i.e. the use of automation, digitization and big data analytics to improve the efficiency of production processes by achieving greater flexibility of production, increasing its productivity while maintaining the highest quality standards, reducing costs, greater control and ensuring the safety of employees.
– Artificial intelligence allows systems to analyze machine performance and environmental factors to make somewhat autonomous decisions to achieve their goals. It also helps to meet many challenges of the modern world, such as. curing diseases or minimizing the impact of farming on the environment. In addition, nowadays solutions in the form of cloud services, which take advantage of the opportunities associated with AI, and in particular Big Data help businesses make extremely complex calculations. They save time, thanks to which companies build their advantage and competitiveness on the market. The benefits they achieve thanks to AI implementations are m.in. accelerating the sales cycle, faster solutions to customer problems, optimizing distribution and logistics, adapting prices to the market or easier detection of fraud. Artificial intelligence can also be used in human resources management, smart factory solutions or electricity management – explains Zbigniew Czajkowski, Channel & Marketing Manager at NMG S.A., Polish IT company, creating software for industry and energy, and also a leader in smart metering implementations in the energy sector in Poland.
According to the latest Eurostat data from 2020, only 7% of EU companies with ten or more employees were using AI applications. Poland is well below average, with only 4% of companies using some application of artificial intelligence. It is worse in only four countries, namely Latvia (2%), Slovenia, Hungary and Cyprus (3% each). At the other extreme are Ireland (23%) and Malta (19%), Finland (12%) and Denmark (11%).
And from the ADP Poland study we know that in the scale of 2020. companies implementing innovative solutions, saw a higher rate of hiring (+4.3% relative to 2019) than the overall market (-1.1%).
– Lack of investment in AI on the Polish market is a worrying trend. As the data shows, supporting company processes through artificial intelligence brings growth and gives these companies a chance to not only survive the post-pandemic time, but to thrive during it – comments Czajkowski from NMG S.A.
From simple chatbots to energy management
According to Eurostat data, most companies used machine learning for internal data analysis, chatbots to facilitate customer contact and speech generators were also popular. Companies also used service robots, which are characterized by a certain degree of autonomy in performing m.in. cleaning, dangerous or repetitive tasks, such as cleaning up poisonous substances, sorting goods in a warehouse, or helping customers with their purchases.
– However, the breakthrough is elsewhere. If you want to fully embrace the digital revolution, you need to invest even more heavily in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). This is the real big leap, as the IIoT enables automation on an unprecedented scale. Interconnecting devices and sensors improves production and maintenance, as well as real-time processing of lots of data. The Internet of Things makes it possible to create smart factories, streamline supply chains or manage human and energy resources in a completely remote manner – NMG SA expert stresses, while adding that humans are still at the center of management.
The task of even the most modern application can be to monitor technical parameters in real time and catch possible problems at the right time, but their solution usually requires the intervention of employees. The situation is similar with platforms that support companies in the area of reduction of purchase costs and energy consumption. The application can help identify places for pro-saving actions, but it is the company managers who have to make the right decisions on the basis of detailed data. – Collecting data without actually processing it can create a lot of noise instead of real insight – warns Czajkowski.
