Craig, the owner of Autobuild Solutions, joined Carlton Riffel for another conversation on The Common Chord. Their previous discussion focused on building a connected sales processes. This time, they looked at how manufacturers can move from asking AI occasional questions to building it into the work that happens every day.
Know where you are starting
Craig uses a progression of vehicles to describe AI adoption. A covered wagon represents a business that has not started using it. A Model T gets moving but needs a manual start. The daily driver is a team using AI regularly with email and spreadsheets. Farther along are businesses building their own tools, followed by systems that can carry out work without waiting for a new prompt each time.
The point of the comparison is to give a business a starting point and a destination. Paying for a powerful tool does not automatically change how the work gets done. A team needs to decide what it wants to improve and which step would make a useful difference.
Pick one repeatable decision
Craig's practical starting point is to look at the decisions made throughout a project. Which ones come up repeatedly? Where does someone gather the same kinds of information before making a call? Which of those steps would be worth improving?
He gives the example of extracting information from a plan set. A person works through the pages, finds the details they need, and brings them into the next part of the job. That repeated task gives a manufacturer a specific place to explore AI, with a clear purpose for the information it produces.
The conversation also returns to the importance of context and timing. Information has to reach the person making the decision while it can still help. Connecting two applications is a useful step, but the team still needs to understand the decision that connection is meant to support.
Keep room to change tools
AI tools will keep changing. Craig recommends keeping enough flexibility in the surrounding system to use different models as the needs of the business change.
That means thinking beyond the features of one chatbot. The recurring task, the information it needs, and the way people use its output should guide the setup. Those needs can stay consistent even when a different AI tool becomes a better fit.
