The rise of industrial AI and AIoT: 4 trends driving technology adoption

The AI adoption rate in industrial settings has increased from 19% to 31% in slightly more than two years, according to data from the recently released 252-page Industrial AI and AIoT Market Report 2021–2026. On top of the 31% of respondents that have fully or partially rolled out AI technology in their operations, an additional 39% are currently testing or piloting the technology. Increased AI adoption can be witnessed across the board but is especially strong in the energy vertical and in process industries, such as oil and gas or chemicals. The combination of high-value assets, large volumes of operational data, and processes that rely on hundreds of parameters contributes to the strong adoption in these industries. Common industrial AI applications include maintenance (e.g., predictive maintenance [PdM]), predictive quality control, the use of machine vision for fault detection, AI-optimized inventory management, and AI-based production planning and optimization.