After the kick-off workshop for our AI journey at JUNG in Schalksmühle at the beginning of February, we visited our member company Wilo in Dortmund on April 8, 2025. The focus there was on three specific AI applications that Wilo uses.
The interactive workshop took place in the InnovationLab. This was the perfect space to get to know specific use cases and exchange experiences.
After a brief round of introductions, David Graurock, Head of AI Competence Center Wilo,
gave us a short overview of the company, its products and strategy as well as its approach to the topic of artificial intelligence.
As the central AI unit at Wilo, the AI Competence Center has been working intensively at various levels for around five years to strengthen and develop knowledge and skills within the company in order to increase the company’s overall productivity. It advises on individual AI projects, proactively introduces possible use cases, is active in AI prototype development and deals with AI and data science.
Our AI tour group learned more about specific use cases in three rotating groups.
Wilo introduced its own chatbot WiloGPT back in 2023. This is being continuously developed as part of various initiatives. In the last major development step, WiloGPT was linked to internal company data sources. The chatbot is now able to consolidate various internal information from presentations, texts or databases and provide instructions for action. A short query delivers the content required. WiloGPT is continuously being developed and optimized.
Another application that is already being used in production at Wilo and has met with a very positive response is adaptive worker assistance. For assembly processes, it offers individual step-by-step instructions tailored to the skills and level of experience of the employees. A translation tool provides multilingual versions. A camera keeps an eye on the assembly process and signals errors. This reduces costs by reducing errors, offers better quality assurance, saves time in the training period and employees can be deployed more flexibly.
The third example of the use of AI is aimed at the area of quality and the 8D method. It is considered a problem-solving approach and is based on a defined sequence of steps that must be followed in order to deal with a problem. At Wilo, the AI tool 8D Assessment accelerates the evaluation of an 8D report on the supplier problem identified by means of an automated assessment.
Our group learned about all three examples of AI applications and was able to contribute and discuss their own questions in small groups. Afterwards, there was time for in-depth discussions over lunch on the sunny roof terrace of the InnovationCube.
Many thanks to everyone from the Wilo team: David Graurock, Markus Bock, Marius Richter, Ann-Kathrin Schmidt, Dr. Hendrik van der Wurp, Wiebke Verstege and Dawid Melzer for the informative and inspiring morning and their hospitality. Comprehensible, concrete and presented with a wealth of experience: the three Wilo examples pave the way for our own ideas and possible projects in our member companies.
Save the Date: The third stop on our KI journey will take us to our member company OBO Bettermann in Menden on July 8, 2025.
You will receive the invitation to this event shortly via our NIRO app.
We have planned further events on the topic of AI:
- May 2025 Workshop AI in quality inspection (in the NIRO port room)
- July 2025 Exchange of experience: Exploring opportunities with AI in product development (at Vulkan in Herne)
You can also find all the information you need in our NIRO app.
