In 2025 the AI conversation is finally past the “let’s ban ChatGPT on the shop floor” phase and into “what does this actually help us do.”
For a wire plant, three areas are real: predictive maintenance on drawing benches, vision-based surface inspection on high-value coils, and pattern-matching for anomalous furnace runs. All of them are augmentation, not automation.
What has not changed: the coil that leaves the warehouse still has to be spec-true, heat-traceable, and documented. AI does not replace any of that. It just helps the people doing it not miss a signal.