For some companies, global shocks have historically brought moments of truth. They can rapidly alter the business landscape and the terms of competition, often in ways that aren't immediately apparent. But companies that make bold moves during challenging times can turn adversity into advantage. The SARS outbreak of 2003 is often credited with giving rise to e-commerce giants such as Alibaba and JD.com, for example, while companies such as American Express and Starbucks pivoted during the global financial crisis of 2008 2009 to digital operating models that enabled them to thrive and dramatically increase shareholder value. In this sense, COVID-19 is likely to be no different from other crises.

Perceiving the pandemics' hard reset as a chance to grow stronger, more resilient, and resourceful dominates manufacturers' mindsets who continue to double down on analytics and AI-driven pilots. Combining human experience, insight, and AI techniques, they're discovering new ways to differentiate themselves while driving down costs and protecting margins. And they're all up for the challenge of continuing to grow in tough economic times. Boston Consulting Group's recent study The Rise of the AI-Powered Company in the Postcrisis World found that in the four previous global economic downturns, 14% of companies were able to increase both sales growth and profit margins as the following graphic shows: AI Is Core To Manufacturing's Real-Time Future Real-time monitoring provides many benefits, including troubleshooting production bottlenecks, tracking scrap rates, meeting customer delivery dates, and more. It's an excellent source of contextually relevant data that can be used for training machine learning models.