Innovator overcomes decades of documentation challenges by empowering engineers, fabricators, and support staff with instant, accurate information.
Drowning in Data, Struggling for Answers
A global manufacturing company with a long history of innovation and a diverse portfolio of product lines, developed both organically and through acquisitions, found itself facing a monumental challenge. Over the years, their operations had generated thousands of individual pieces of documentation, ranging from intricate engineering diagrams and detailed product specification sheets to custom order forms. When broken down, this amounted to millions of individual chunks of information.
For their engineers, fabricators, and client-support staff, accessing precise information like what was built, what was delivered, and when—had become a “muddy, long-running, complicated” issue. This vast and fragmented knowledge base made it difficult to quickly and efficiently find critical data, which led to delays, inconsistencies, and a drain on valuable expert resources. The sheer volume and complexity of the information were significant hurdles to operations and decision-making.
The High Cost of Inaccessible Knowledge
The inability to navigate the documentation was more than just an inconvenience; it was a barrier to peak performance and responsiveness.
Operational Drag: Time spent searching for documents was time not spent on core tasks, impacting project timelines and overall efficiency.
Expert Overload: Subject matter experts were frequently pulled from their primary duties to answer questions that, ideally, could be self-serviced if the information was readily accessible.
- Knowledge Silos: Information from various product lines and historical acquisitions was siloed, making a unified view of product knowledge difficult to maintain and leverage.
- User Frustration: Engineers, fabricators, and support staff were challenged when trying to pinpoint specific customer details within the massive dataset, impacting their ability to support clients effectively.
- Scalability Concerns: As the company continued to grow and evolve, the problem of managing and accessing the library of information was escalate.
The initial vision for a straightforward knowledge agent deployment turned into “quite the journey,” highlighting the deep-seated complexities the company and its team faced in trying to capture their extensive knowledge base.
Intelligent Knowledge Activation with a Custom-Branded AI Assistant
This global manufacturing company partnered with Krista to deploy a sophisticated Knowledge Agent, which they internally branded as their custom AI assistant. The custom knowledge agent sits on top of their extensive reference documentation. This AI-powered agent provides hundreds of engineers, fabricators, and client-support staff with a “fully free-text / NLU experience” to find the answers they need from the myriad of documents.
Key aspects of the Krista implementation included:
- Unified Access to Millions of Data Points: Krista was configured to handle a single knowledge base containing thousands of documents, which translated into millions of indexed chunks of information.
- Improved User Experience: Recognizing the limitations of existing tools like Teams APIs, a new capability was developed allowing users to invoke the custom AI assistant through Microsoft Teams and then launch into an authenticated session in Krista’s client UI in their web browser, directly engaging with the conversation without a separate login.
- Rigid Access Control: A strict attribute-based access control (ABAC) scheme was implemented based on knowledge-based content to ensure users could access only information relevant to their roles and permissions.
- Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) Integration: The custom AI assistant integrated with the manufacturer’s existing SME tool, ensuring that if the AI couldn’t find an answer, the query would be escalated to a human expert, with the new knowledge then used to train Krista for future inquiries.
The custom-branded AI assistant is poised to deliver significant ROI by drastically reducing the time engineers, fabricators, and client-support staff spend searching for information. By providing instant, accurate answers, the AI assistant frees up invaluable expert resource time, allowing the company’s skilled professionals to focus on core, high-value tasks rather than information retrieval.
This successful deployment has not only addressed a critical internal challenge but has also ignited enthusiasm within the manufacturing company. Internal advocates are already exploring Krista’s potential for other business areas, such as HR, signaling strong positive momentum and the promise of further operational enhancements. The implementation of the AI assistant has positioned the company for increased efficiency, greater agility, and a more empowered workforce, ready to leverage their collective knowledge like never before.
