Priya Natarajan worked as an operations coordinator in a lock manufacturing plant in Dindigul and was in charge of production schedules and quality records on spreadsheets and in manual format. Although she was effective, she realised that the automation technologies were transforming the manufacturing processes, and her job was becoming obsolete. Having studied the options of upskilling, she took the Gen AI Course Dindigul at FITA Academy to switch to the field of industrial AI.
The shift from administrative tasks to the technical development of AI was disruptive at first, but the gradual programme development provided her with consistent confidence through the structured programme curriculum grounded in the basics of programming. Over weekends, which fit well with her working schedule, Priya developed capabilities, starting with the basics of data analysis and progressing to creating her own machine learning models. Her capstone project was to design an AI-powered production planning system to optimise the manufacturing schedules by use of demand forecasting and availability of its resources, which minimised the downtimes by 40 percent. An industrial automation consultancy serving manufacturers in the region was interested in this innovation.
Two months later, when Priya was given her certification, she found a job as an industrial AI consultant, using her operations knowledge and technical abilities to produce 140% above what she was doing in her former job by assisting factories in installing intelligent systems.
