AI TRAINING
AI for the 10-Person Factory
Leave with a working plan to digitise SOPs, speed up quoting, and catch defects using free or low-cost AI tools.
What it covers
A one-day, hands-on workshop designed for owner-operators and production managers at small manufacturing shops. Participants learn to digitise standard operating procedures, automate repetitive quoting tasks, use smartphone-based visual inspection for defect spotting, and extract data from supplier documents — all without a dedicated IT team. Sessions alternate between short concept explanations and live tool exercises on real shop-floor documents. Participants leave with a prioritised action list and ready-to-use prompt templates.
What you'll be able to do
- Convert at least one paper SOP into a searchable digital format using an AI tool during the workshop
- Build a simple prompt-driven quoting template that reduces manual calculation time
- Set up a free smartphone vision tool to flag obvious defects on a sample product image
- Extract line items and delivery terms from a supplier PDF without manual copy-paste
- Produce a one-page prioritised AI roadmap for your specific production context
Topics covered
- Digitising paper SOPs with AI document tools
- Building a simple quoting assistant using off-the-shelf LLMs
- Smartphone-based visual defect detection with free vision models
- Extracting structured data from supplier invoices and spec sheets
- Evaluating free vs. low-cost AI tools for the shop floor
- Writing effective prompts without technical background
- Identifying the highest-ROI AI opportunity in your specific shop
Delivery
Delivered in-person at the client's site or a local co-working space; can also run fully remote via video call with screen-sharing. Participants bring their own laptop and smartphone. Roughly 40% concept, 60% hands-on exercises using real or anonymised shop documents. A printed workbook and digital prompt library are provided. Follow-up email Q&A support is included for 30 days post-workshop.
What makes it work
- Owner-operator actively participates rather than just sending staff
- Workshop uses the company's own real documents rather than generic examples
- At least one quick-win action is implemented within two weeks of the workshop
- A named internal champion is assigned to maintain and iterate on adopted tools
Common mistakes
- Buying expensive SaaS platforms before validating the use case with free tools
- Delegating AI adoption entirely to a junior employee with no owner buy-in
- Trying to automate too many processes at once instead of one high-impact workflow
- Ignoring data privacy risks when uploading sensitive supplier or customer documents to public AI tools
When NOT to take this
A 50-person factory that already runs an ERP and has a dedicated IT manager — they need a practitioner-level programme covering system integration and MLOps, not this foundational one-day session.
Providers to consider
Sources
This training is part of a Data & AI catalog built for leaders serious about execution. Take the free diagnostic to see which trainings your team needs.