{"id":791733,"date":"2026-07-10T16:53:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T16:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/791733\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T16:53:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T16:53:13","slug":"free-ai-platform-targeting-composites-manufacturers-is-estimated-to-save-billions-in-efficiencies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/791733\/","title":{"rendered":"Free AI Platform Targeting Composites Manufacturers is Estimated to Save Billions in Efficiencies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AI<\/a><\/p>\n

Source | Getty Images<\/p>\n

A novel-based AI manufacturing augmentation platform, supported by the Australian Composites Manufacturing CRC<\/a> (ACM CRC, Sydney) and developed at Deakin University\u2019s (Burwood, Australia)\u00a0Applied AI Initiative<\/a>, has shown the potential to\u00a0create billions of dollars in efficiencies when adopted by composites manufacturers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ForgeX.ai contains apps enabling\u00a0manufacturers to use natural language queries to collect and search their data, run experiments on this to help optimize processes, and migrate and integrate data across enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. It was supported by $110,143 in ACM CRC co-funding and will be made freely available to Australian manufacturers, beginning with those in the composites sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe potential impact of allowing companies to \u2018converse with their own factory\u2019 cannot be overstated. And this version is just a chatbot interface. ForgeX.ai will be more powerful still if developed to offer agentic AI,\u201d says Luke Preston, CEO at ACM CRC.\u00a0\u201cAll the same, our estimates are that it could offer between 30-50% efficiency gains to manufacturers with no data system currently, and only a little less for those who do. If we could roll it out to just 10%\u00a0of the addressable market in Australia, it would mean $4.1 billion in economic benefit. We also estimate that it can enable the introduction of Industry 4.0 at 1\/100th the cost.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The project lead, Deakin Applied AI Associate Professor Scott Barnett, says that the solution had origins in a previous (and discontinued) Australia\u2019s Economic Accelerator-funded project using AI to reduce waste in manufacturing by identifying the root cause of defects. This was followed by exploring other use cases to help manufacturers who lacked software engineers to build in-house AI solutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all depend on software, but typically they don\u2019t\u00a0have the in-house capabilities,\u201d explains\u00a0Barnett. \u201cSo we went looking at ways to build tools that can help power up people who are perhaps traditionally not software engineers and use AI to bridge the gap as far as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

ForgeX.ai is able to generate text, charts and images from users\u2019 queries, and is built to be operated and calibrated by workers who have minimal training in machine learning. The system also\u00a0focuses on protecting the IP of partners by keeping everything in Australia and on-premise if required. Data is always private and secure.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt also allows all the content available in an organization to be easily and effectively structured,\u201d adds\u00a0Barnett. \u201cWe put something over the top of that to make everything more reliable and robust than Excel spreadsheets. So there will be less time spent on administration work, basically.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe platform is available now for partners and composite manufacturers, and we hope to expand beyond composite manufacturers next year,\u201d says Preston. \u201cIf your business could benefit from this system, please reach out to ACM CRC<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Source | Getty Images A novel-based AI manufacturing augmentation platform, supported by the Australian Composites Manufacturing CRC (ACM…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,105],"class_list":["post-791733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}