AI Is Transforming Appalachia - National Association of Manufacturers - NAM

Small manufacturers in Appalachia are quietly winning with AI right now. Not because they're tech companies — because they started small and stayed practical. That probably sounds different from your

Small manufacturers in Appalachia are quietly winning with AI right now. Not because they're tech companies — because they started small and stayed practical.

That probably sounds different from your experience. You bought the tool, paid the monthly fee, and watched it collect digital dust while your team kept doing things the old way. You're not alone, and it wasn't a failure of intelligence. The tools were oversold and the support disappeared.

Here's what the manufacturers getting real results have in common: they didn't implement "AI." They solved one specific problem. Scheduling. Quality inspection. Quoting. One process. One clear before-and-after result. That's it.

They didn't overhaul their operations. They didn't retrain their whole team. They found the single task that was eating the most time or causing the most errors — and they fixed that first.

That's your starting point. Not a strategy. Not a roadmap. One painful, repetitive task your team does every week that could be handed off or accelerated. That's your first AI win, and it's achievable in under 30 days without touching anything else that's working.

What's the one task in your business you wish someone else would just handle for you?

#Manufacturing #AIStrategy #SmallBusiness #BusinessGrowth

Original Source

... business. Council of Manufacturing Associations. For Small and Medium Manufacturers ... AI Is Transforming Appalachia. alopez@nam.org June 4, 2025.