Made in America: How AI is keeping this U.S. factory competitive

The assembly lines at GE Appliances' cooking appliance plant in LaFayette, Ga., have camera systems trained to detect errors. Julie Holder for NPR hide caption

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LAFAYETTE, Ga. — Inside Roper Corporation, a GE Appliances-owned plant in rural northwest Georgia, autonomous vehicles deliver parts to assembly lines. Robots attach glass cooktops to metal frames. And deployed throughout are AI-powered cameras and sensors, trained to catch mistakes.

"We have these things everywhere out here," says Tony Gabbert, the plant's director of manufacturing operations.

If a camera spots an anomaly — the wrong gasket installed on an oven, for example — the system will shut that part of the line down and start playing loud music.

"If you hear AC/DC, you know to come running down here," says Gabbert. "The quicker we know what the problem is, the quicker we can fix it."

Tony Gabbert is the plant's director of manufacturing operations. He says AI-powered quality control systems are critical to ensuring they catch errors early and solve them quickly. Julie Holder for NPR hide caption

Today, American factories are under extraordinary pressure to perform perfectly. They must turn out flawless products, efficiently, in order to compete with imports from rivals overseas. It used to be up to people to achieve good results. Now, manufacturers are leaning heavily into advanced technology and artificial intelligence to up their game.