When manufacturers think of digital transformation in factory settings driven by AI, the first thing that comes to mind usually isn’t chocolate. But the Hershey Company is among the manufacturing companies driving digital transformation in its candy factories, using AI to augment its workforce through various platforms.  

The candymaker is using an AI-powered connected-worker platform created by the software company Augmentir to drive workforce transformation in its factories.  

As manufacturing companies across verticals are navigating how to implement AI into their workforce processes, Augmentir’s platform, called “Augie,” aims to allow companies to tailor the technology to their own needs.  

“There's been a lot of advancements in digital transformation of equipment, machines, and making machines smart and connected, but little in terms of making humans smart and connected,” said Chris Kuntz, chief marketing officer of Augmentir.  

“So we said, ‘what we want to do is build a platform that empowers humans to do work better,’” he said.  

He said that Augmentir’s agentic AI platform is designed for use in workforce and factory settings, working alongside human workers while capturing data on how workers perform. Part of the reason why the platform was created was in response to workforce data problems, such as how work was being measured anecdotally, he said.  

The need for better data on worker behavior only increased as issues like labor shortages, aging workforces and skills and labor gaps became more prominent in the manufacturing industry. This creates problems like increased machine downtime and quality and production issues. 

“If you can understand the workers correctly, you can provide intelligent guidance and support for those workers,” he said. 

The platform captures signals, such as how long workers take to perform certain tasks like machine maintenance and worker engagement rates on assembly lines, and then crafts insights on worker performance based on those signals for customers to use.  

Insights can include shift performance data; previous shift hand-off information; and maintenance request tools, among others. 

Kuntz said that one of the things Hershey used the connected worker platform to provide corrective action insights for problems on the factory floor.  

The company also used quality agents and training agents in order to identify where workers needed additional guidance and training. It also used agents to schedule machine maintenance routines and starting and stopping production lines.  

Hershey was also able to create digital workflows that guide workers through tasks with instructions and embedded insights.  

Augmentir also has “why” agents, which are root cause analysis agents that are acting on various data that feeds into the platform for workers to have access to when they use the platform. 

Use cases often center around equipment operation, maintenance on equipment, quality, safety and workforce development or training, among others, he said.  

Other customers include Biochem Fluidics; Hunter Industries; Duracell; Andersen Windows; Keurig Dr Pepper; and more.  

Case Study: Keurig Dr. Pepper 

In the case of Keurig Dr. Pepper, that company used the platform for product changeover. When changing aluminum cans for different products, such as from regular Dr. Pepper to diet Dr. Pepper, the company dealt with issues of waste and potential product recalls due to barcodes on the aluminum cans.  

The barcodes are often in different positions on cans and are sometimes faded, so operators have to read barcodes and make sure it matches up with the filler liquid coming up to fill the cans, unable to use computer vision systems due to the variability in the cans and machines.

Human error has resulted in product recalls due to incorrect product changeover. Last year, over 19,000 cases of Dr. Pepper Zero Sugar were recalled, as the12-ounce cans labeled as zero sugar but found to contain the full sugar content of regular Dr. Pepper. 

The company did a three month pilot with Augmentir last year, putting Augie in the middle of that process. Augie took a picture of the can and performed optical character recognition to make sure the codes matched and the correct liquid was put into the correct can. Therefore, human error that can occur when matching codes is avoided.  

It then tells the machine operator to continue with product changeover.  

‘Library of Agents’ 

Other companies have different use cases as well. Augmentir has “a library of pre-built agents, [and] each customer has their own agents that they can build,” Kuntz said. 

Some of their chemical customers like Biochem and Hunter scale Augmentir to their own complex workflows, allowing them to test the platform on smaller use cases before deploying it to larger scale workflows.  

Even as companies like Hershey continue to digitally transform, Kuntz said Augmentir can be used for less advanced cases as well, using various aspects of the platform based on how far along they are in digitalization. 

“Our customers have their own use cases and their own work processes, so this is truly a platform they can [use to] build out their workflows based on their work processes,” he said.  

The platform can integrate with each companies’ systems as the source of record, like SAP, quality management systems and maintenance execution systems. Kuntz added that the platform will typically integrate with five or six different enterprise systems in a given customer implementation. 

“In any case, everyone's using the AI aspects of it, meaning they're collecting data on how the workers are performing and surfacing insights that they can act on,” Kuntz said.