Revolutionising R&D: How Generative AI turbocharged knowledge management for a leading manufacturer
A global leader’s challenge
Innovation, quality, and safety form the DNA of one of India’s premier manufacturing giants. Operating across diverse markets worldwide, this client has consistently delivered excellence, pushing boundaries in performance and customer satisfaction. Yet, within their R&D team—a key driver of this innovation—lay a monumental challenge: a deluge of over 100 complex engineering documents and standard operating procedures stood in the way of efficiency.
The manual process of sifting through these dense, technical documents not only drained productivity but left room for human error. Sales and marketing, customer service, and compliance teams bore the ripple effects, as slow information access hindered agility and decision-making. The client needed a revolutionary solution to empower their teams, speed up processes, and transform productivity.
Enter generative AI
We collaborated with the client to automate their knowledge management system with cutting-edge Generative AI (GenAI). By building a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) framework, we transformed their R&D operations into a powerhouse of efficiency.
The Deloitte edge
- Data extraction: We extracted critical information from over 110 R&D-related documents, slicing complex data into smaller, manageable fragments.
- Embeddings for precision: These fragments were converted into embeddings—mathematical representations enabling semantic analysis. User queries were also transformed into embeddings, and similarity scores identified the most relevant document fragments.
- LLM integration: Large Language Models (LLMs) powered the solution, delivering accurate, nuanced responses to even the most complex queries.
- Customisation with abbreviations: To meet the client’s industry-specific needs, we incorporated over 160 technical abbreviations, ensuring the system understood and responded to R&D queries with unparalleled precision.
The impact
The results were nothing short of transformative:
- Empowering productivity: The R&D team soared in efficiency, freeing time to focus on innovation rather than documentation.
- High accuracy: The solution achieved over 85% accuracy in generating precise, actionable answers.
- Enhanced decision-making: Access to critical R&D information became effortless, fuelling smarter decisions across the organisation.
This GenAI solution not only optimised the R&D process but also gave sales and marketing teams the edge to highlight cutting-edge innovations while ensuring compliance across product lines.
A future-ready vision
With plans to scale the solution to over 1,500 documents spanning multiple departments, the client is creating a centralised knowledge hub—one that empowers teams, drives innovation, and positions the company to lead in a competitive landscape.
By adopting Generative AI for knowledge management, this manufacturing giant is doing more than saving time; they are setting the stage for a future where innovation flows seamlessly, market trends are quickly analysed, and consumer needs are met with agility.
Christine Ahn
