From AI hype to business value in manufacturing

For many industrial companies, valuable information is already there – spread across ERP, CRM, PLM and other systems. But with large amounts of data and limited time to analyse it, opportunities can easily go unnoticed.

This is the challenge Finnish company Fulcrum Industrial has set out to address. The company develops AI agents that work on top of the systems companies already use, identifying aftermarket opportunities and delivering them to the right person, ready to act.

Matti Ryttyläinen is founder and CTO at Fulcrum Industrial. He sees significant untapped potential in the information industrial companies already have at their disposal.

– Industrial OEMs have a lot of valuable information spread across their systems, but nobody has the time to go through it all. As a result, aftermarket opportunities slip by unnoticed, says Matti.

From talking about AI to creating value

AI has rapidly become part of the conversation across manufacturing. But according to Matti, implementing the technology itself is not the difficult part. The bigger step is being prepared to rethink established ways of working.

– Mostly, it takes courage. Adding AI to existing processes and roles gives you incremental gains. The real value comes when you're willing to redesign the human work around what the technology can now do: who does what, which decisions are made where, and what people spend their time on.

Rather than starting with a broad ambition to “use AI”, Matti advocates beginning with a specific business challenge and integrating AI directly into the everyday workflow of the people responsible for solving it.

– The companies that succeed start from one concrete business problem, put AI into the daily workflow of the people who own that problem, and measure results in euros.

Making better use of the data you already have

One barrier for many companies is the belief that their data needs to be complete or perfectly structured before they can begin using AI. Matti takes a more pragmatic view.

Large organisations inevitably have gaps where information or opportunities can fall through the cracks. AI offers new ways of identifying these gaps, prioritising what matters and helping people act proactively.

– Many companies think that because they have incomplete data, they should not implement AI. While the “garbage in, garbage out” principle does hold, implementing AI can allow you to quickly see how far you get – and illuminate which data gaps are the highest priority for driving business results.

This also connects closely to this year’s Elmia Subcontractor theme, Resilience powered by industry. Beyond increasing efficiency by automating operational work, better use of existing data can help manufacturers identify opportunities that would otherwise be difficult and costly to find through human labour alone.

In turn, that can help companies protect – and potentially grow – their market share.

Looking to the Nordic manufacturing industry

Fulcrum Industrial is based in Finland, but sees significant opportunities across the Nordic manufacturing sector. Sweden, in particular, is home to many industrial OEMs with a long history of adopting new technologies.

– The Nordics, and Sweden in particular, have world-class industrial OEMs with a strong record of adopting new technology early. They're pragmatic and engineering-driven, and they care about results more than hype, which is exactly the kind of company we want to work with, says Matti.

At Elmia Subcontractor, he hopes to meet manufacturers that recognise there is still untapped value in their own data.

– We want to learn about their challenges first-hand and start conversations that can turn into concrete projects.

AI beyond chats and documents

During Elmia Subcontractor, Matti will also take to the Competence Stage, focusing on how industrial OEMs can use AI to unlock more of the potential in aftermarket sales.

And there is one message he hopes visitors will take away from the session: the potential of AI extends far beyond the applications many people have become familiar with.

– I hope people will see that AI can be used for much more than chatting and producing documents. It can actually orchestrate day-to-day activities.

Hear Matti Ryttyläinen speak on 12 November, 9:30–10:15 AM, at the Competence Stage (Hall C), presenting "Supercharging Aftermarket with AI".

The image above is an AI-generated illustrative image. The portrait of Matti Ryttyläinen is an actual photograph.