Improving efficiencies by streamlining our inventories in Supply Chain Management (SCM) to become asset light, using Robotics to significantly improve our capability to keep men, machinery and equipment safe at our construction sites, and sharpening our contracts are some of the many ways that AI is going to give us that razor competitive edge in the increasingly commoditized world of construction.
Our L&T One initiative, an over-arching cutting-edge Enterprise AI platform, is therefore poised to be a game-changer, at the heart of which lies the L&T Cognitive Services (L&T CS) to re-shape our decision-making, risk management, and business growth. With time, L&T CS will enhance our governance and compliance with state-of-the-art guardrails, enable seamless data integration by breaking down silos, create frameworks to integrate both structured and unstructured data, and become a one-stop shop for comprehensive AI solutions to ensure consistency, reduce redundancy, and maximize the impact of our serious investments in frontier technologies.
Composite AI is where the world is going; the sooner we adopt, the sooner we implement, the sooner we can significantly impact our bottom line.
AI is already rewriting the rules of the game
With Contracts.AI, we have targeted the areas of tenders and contract management, leveraging AI to analyse past successes, market trends, and client preferences to make more compelling and competitive bids. One of its most powerful features is its ability to predict and plan for potential risks associated with each tender, to reduce execution risks and ensure smoother project delivery.
The AI-powered Clause Library will be a comprehensive resource, to quickly access relevant, legally sound contract language tailored to specific project needs. By employing advanced algorithms, Contracts.AI is empowered to not only predict potential challenges in project execution but assist in developing targeted mitigation strategies too.
SCM is another critical area where AI is making an immediate and significant impact. With Constzon, our price benchmarking tool, buyers are guided to procure all major services and materials within L&T at an optimized, benchmarked price that is dynamic, shifting, based on an inbuiltalgorithm and seeking data from current and past spends along with market intelligence. Looking at the quantum of our total procurements, savings of even a percent will be huge.
Superior inventory management is critical, and by analysing our inventory aging and shared inventory systems with AI, we will be able to find options to share assets and equipment, both hired and bought, across businesses, projects, jobs, warehouses, etc. to liberate months-old inventories and locked-up capital. We should target to be as asset light as some of the automotive companies that work with mere shift inventories.
AI has the potential to enhance our efficiencies across the board: right from design to project management to finance; transforming financial operations by assisting in budgeting, forecasting, and assessing financial risk for deeper insights and strategic decision-making. It can positively impact even HR, focusing on talent management and workforce optimization. Going forward, Vision.AI will drive EHS performance with improved safety monitoring, quality control, progress tracking, and analytics for predictive maintenance and workflow optimization.
Make a difference
AI empowers, but the onus is on each one of us to recognize and appreciate its transformative powers and use it to put and keep us ahead of the curve. Delivering projects on time as per contractual obligations should remain our primary aim; no effort should or can be spared to achieve that objective. There is no better or easier way to win clients than by delivering and meeting their expectations. The reality is that those expectations are soaring, and to meet them, our capabilities to deliver must rise accordingly too. That is where technology, and AI in particular, will strengthen us. The solutions are all available; it is up to every IC, every business and function, every project leadership and team to pick and choose and adopt to drive change.
This issue of ECC Concord based on the theme ‘Ride the tech wave’ features several projects across businesses and geographies that have successfully adopted technology to make a difference across spheres of functioning and delivery. Kudos to all these teams, but these numbers must grow. Only then will we grow. And grow we must.
Mega opportunities are up for grabs, and even as competition hots up, our lead in tech adoption should give us the winning edge and, in the final analysis, make a significant difference to our profitability.
All the best!
S N Subrahmanyan
Chairman & Managing Director, Larsen & Toubro