Traditional industries and AI: When old meets new
BBC
Carpet making may be one of the oldest skilled jobs in the world, but even this traditional industry has begun to adopt the most modern of technologies – Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Kukoon Rugs is a family-owned firm that sells online and through some of the biggest retail chains in the UK and Ireland.
Chief Executive Paul Vallely says AI allows the business to be more competitive, allowing him to scale up parts of the firm that he wouldn’t have been able to so before.
“I think every department uses it extensively, pretty much daily. That’s from finance through to commercial, marketing, supply chain, and product.”
While acknowledging the history of his family’s business in Newry, County Down, he believes technology like AI can only enhance it.
“Rug making has been around for thousands of years, and has been around in this area for a long, long time.
“The product itself maybe doesn’t change too much, but every single bit of the process as to how we design and create the product, market it to the customer, and then get it to the customer, that’s fundamentally changing. And that’s through AI.”
Removing the boring tasks
Artificial Intelligence has often been accused of having a negative impact on creative industries, but Vallely says this isn’t the case.
“AI is allowing us to do more accurate, more efficient, and far faster and more thoughtful work, and it’s releasing the team’s time to look at more analysis, more research, and actually produce more creative work.”
Vallely says the “biggest impact for us to adopting AI has been, first of all, the removal of some of the very worst and most boring tasks across office-based roles, and probably the excitement and engagement of the team”.
“I think as everyone started to adopt it and really buy into it, everyone can see opportunities to do work that they were never able to do before to a standard they were never able to do it, and they’re really getting their time released to do more.”
Kukoon is not the only business to harness artificial intelligence in a bid to become more competitive.
The manufacturing industry also has a long tradition in Northern Ireland, which became world famous for linen and shipbuilding in the wake of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.
Nestled in the Sperrin Mountains just outside Limavady is Seating Matters which manufactures specialist clinical seating.
Their products are exported to healthcare facilities right across the globe including the US and Australia. Their seats have also featured in television dramas including Emmerdale and Coronation Street.
For managing director Martin Tierney, AI has its strengths and weaknesses, but it is now an integrated part of his company’s daily work.
‘Someone who knows AI could replace your job’
“AI is not going to replace your job, but someone who knows AI could replace your job, so we’re very much embracing it, encouraging people to use it, and doing it within guardrails in a sensible way,” Tierney says.
While Tierney feels the technology is poor at customer service, it has revolutionised many of the back-office functions.
“On all the laborious things like accounting and finance and data and pulling together information from 20 different sources, it’s a really good tool to help you get there.”
Tierney says he likens the power of AI to that of a calculator.
“You know, way back in the 1800s, and everything’s done on pen and paper. No one had a calculator, and they thought, what if a calculator comes along and replaces all the accountants?
“Well, that didn’t happen. It allowed the accountant to be more productive, and then Excel came along and made them more productive again.
“AI is doing that again, but doing it on steroids.”
He says implementing AI across his business has not only improved productivity it has also led to new jobs being created.
“We have more team members now than we did before, and AI is allowing those people to be more productive, to do more intelligent work, and less of the boring work.
“No one likes going upstairs and into a filing cabinet to pull out a drawer and flick through your paper. You know that’s not a good use of anyone’s time.”
‘There’s always a human at the wheel’
Tierney says one of the great things about AI is that he doesn’t need to have an IT degree to make use of the software.
“You just chat to it, say, ‘Here’s what I’m trying to do, could you help me flesh out this idea?'”
While staff at Seating Matters are encouraged to use AI to help solve problems and speed up some of the more mundane tasks, they do operate within guardrails.
Tierney likens it to driving with the handbrake on.
“We’re not putting patient information or financial information on here.
Yes, we can use it to sift through data to help us find an email from six years ago that might be relevant today, but we’re doing it in a way that there’s always a human at the wheel. It’s always checked by someone.”
