Maintenance now plays a central role in the management of complex machines and systems. In modern plants, it is in fact increasingly important to guarantee pre-established levels of productivity and availability also in consideration of the fact that these are often parameters included in the contractual terms. In addition to these aspects, it is also essential to be able to control the overall management costs of the plants since, in an enlarged economic scenario, competition is fierce and globalization leads to a direct confrontation with Emerging Countries that have labour at lower costs. The issues related to effectiveness, measurable in terms of availability and productivity, and efficiency, which instead can be assessed on the basis of specific management costs, are increasingly interconnected and their control opens the scenario to multiple trade-offs that, especially in the case of complex systems in which the operating variables are many, it is not possible to fully govern with traditional methods. Industry 4.0 and Artificial Intelligence are making a truly significant contribution to the evolution of maintenance, which has gone from a purely reactive operation to a preventive, predictive and finally prescriptive operation.

Over the past two years, there has been a heated debate on the future of work and its effect on businesses with exponential advancements in technology and artificial intelligence (AI). Many companies shut down as governments enforced the WHO protocols, lockdowns, cessation of movements and curfews. The Covid-19 pandemic has been detrimental to the financial economy. As the economy starts to open up again, the biggest question many are pondering is, "how do we navigate from this point?" The majority of people are now required to work from home due to the pandemic.

In my first post in this series, I wrote that one definition of artificial intelligence (AI) is a machine that thinks. Several people with technical backgrounds in the AI field reached out to me after reading that post. One comment I received that I found striking is that AI is neither A nor I. Instead, it is just computer code. Nothing is thinking; a computer is just following directions. And AI is just inputs to outputs for a goal.