AI Skills for Manufacturers
Give your frontline production workers a practical, no-cost foundation in AI — built for manufacturing.
Preparing America’s Manufacturing Workforce for an AI-Enabled Future
Artificial intelligence is changing how manufacturers operate — from improving quality and productivity to supporting maintenance, safety and decision-making. As these technologies become more common on the plant floor, production workers need the knowledge and confidence to understand AI and work effectively alongside it.
The Manufacturing Institute’s AI Skills Initiative is helping manufacturers prepare their workforce for this shift. Through the AI Skills for Manufacturing Training Suite, manufacturers can give frontline production workers practical, manufacturing-focused AI education designed to build foundational knowledge and confidence.
Investing in employees’ skills helps manufacturers not only prepare workers for new technologies, but also engage and retain their workforce and strengthen workplace culture. AI skills give employees the foundation they need to adapt, contribute and help their companies remain competitive.
The training is valuable whether or not AI is already on your shop floor. Where AI is deployed, it builds a shared foundation across your teams. Where it is not yet, it helps demystify the technology, prepare your workforce ahead of adoption and get workers thinking about the best, most effective use cases for their roles.
The AI Skills for Manufacturing Training Suite
The training suite gives frontline production workers a practical foundation in AI and how it applies to manufacturing — available at no cost to manufacturers and their employees. The flexible learning journey starts with foundational AI knowledge and lets learners build deeper skills through additional courses.
AI Fundamentals for Manufacturing
Two foundational courses — Introduction to AI for Manufacturing and Course 1: Working with AI — introduce learners to what AI is, how it is used across manufacturing and the value it brings to safety, quality and productivity. No prior AI experience required.
AI Fundamentals+ for Manufacturing
Four additional courses (Courses 2–5) build a deeper understanding of how AI systems operate in manufacturing — and explore practical ways to use AI to improve processes, solve problems and support day-to-day work.
- No cost to manufacturers and employees
- Self-paced and web-based — no classroom time
- Works on desktop, tablet and mobile
- Available in English and Spanish
- Delivered via the MI’s LMS — or integrated into your existing platform
Easy to Deploy Across Your Production Workforce
Designed with frontline production workers in mind, the web-based training can be completed at employees’ own pace — without in-person instruction or dedicated classroom time. Training is optimized for computers, tablets and mobile devices and will be available in English and Spanish. AI Fundamentals takes approximately two hours, while each AI Fundamentals+ course takes approximately one hour (four hours total).
The AI Skills for Manufacturing Training Suite is provided through the MI’s learning management system, but the training can be integrated into your existing learning platform.
How Manufacturers Can Use the Training
Manufacturers can incorporate the training into existing workforce development and upskilling efforts to help production employees build a shared foundation in AI.
Identify production workers who would benefit from foundational AI education.
Share the training as part of existing learning and development efforts.
Give employees time and encouragement to complete the training on their own schedules.
Connect learning to the workplace by encouraging employees to consider how AI is being used — or could be used — in their day-to-day work.
What Employers Will Gain
Build foundational AI knowledge among production workers.
Help employees understand and engage with AI-enabled technologies.
Give workers the skills to evaluate AI outputs, use AI responsibly, apply human judgment and identify opportunities to use AI in their work.
Go Deeper: AI Workforce Resources
More on why workforce readiness is the first step toward AI-ready manufacturing:
Learning Objectives
These learning objectives outline the knowledge learners can build as they progress from understanding how AI is used in manufacturing to applying AI concepts in production environments.
Introduction to AI for Manufacturing: Understand AI on the Shop Floor
Part of AI Fundamentals for Manufacturing.
AI has been a part of manufacturing for decades and is playing a larger part of modern plant floor operations. You may see it in machines, dashboards, inspection systems, cameras or alerts that help spot problems earlier and find fixes faster. This simple, plain-language intro course shows learners what these tools are and how they can help on the job.
Learning objectives:
- What AI can do in a manufacturing setting.
- Where AI may show up on the shop floor.
- How to use AI tools safely at work.
- Why your experience and judgment matters even more.
Course 1: Working with AI
Part of AI Fundamentals for Manufacturing.
AI is increasingly a tool used throughout manufacturing. In this course, learners explore how AI supports safety, quality and productivity, how team members and AI work together, and how to use AI-enabled tools responsibly in a manufacturing environment.
Learning objectives:
- Explain the difference between traditional automation and AI-enabled systems.
- Describe how team members and AI systems work together in manufacturing operations.
- Recognize how AI can support safety, quality and productivity.
- Use manufacturing knowledge and experience to evaluate AI recommendations and outputs.
- Follow company procedures and protect sensitive information when using AI tools.
Course 2: How AI Makes Decisions
Part of AI Fundamentals+ for Manufacturing.
Learn how AI systems process information, identify patterns and support manufacturing operations. This course explores how AI generates insights and how team members use operational knowledge and real-world conditions to evaluate AI outputs.
Learning objectives:
- Explain how the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle can be used to evaluate and improve AI-enabled processes.
- Describe the difference between fixed-rule automation and AI systems that use information and patterns to support decisions and actions.
- Apply a structured approach to compare AI outputs with actual equipment and process conditions.
- Explain how context, production goals and operating requirements influence AI performance.
- Identify situations where AI outputs should be verified against equipment conditions, process knowledge and safety requirements.
Course 3: The Sensory Factory
Part of AI Fundamentals+ for Manufacturing.
Explore how AI-enabled systems use information from machines, sensors and cameras to understand what is happening throughout a manufacturing operation.
Learning objectives:
- Explain how AI systems collect and process information from sensors, cameras and manufacturing equipment.
- Describe how AI identifies patterns in operational data to support equipment monitoring, quality control and process improvement.
- Explain how computer vision systems inspect products and identify defects that may be difficult to detect consistently through manual inspection alone.
- Describe how multiple sources of information can be combined to improve understanding of manufacturing operations and process conditions.
- Evaluate how sensing technologies contribute to predictive maintenance, quality assurance, safety monitoring and production optimization.
Course 4: The Agentic Era
Part of AI Fundamentals+ for Manufacturing.
Learn how AI systems can perform more complex tasks, make decisions across multiple steps and support manufacturing processes.
Learning objectives:
- Explain the difference between AI tools that assist team members and AI systems that can perform multi-step tasks independently with supervision.
- Describe how natural language can be used to interact with manufacturing systems and generate technical outputs.
- Use AI-supported simulations to evaluate production scenarios and explore possible outcomes.
- Explain how AI-enabled systems use information, adapt to changing conditions and support manufacturing operations.
- Identify the importance of maintaining safety, quality and operating requirements in autonomous processes.
Course 5: The Future-Ready Team Member
Part of AI Fundamentals+ for Manufacturing.
Bring together everything learned throughout the training suite and explore how team members can continue to succeed as AI becomes more integrated into manufacturing operations.
Learning objectives:
- Explain how different AI technologies work together to support manufacturing operations.
- Describe the continuing importance of manufacturing knowledge, hands-on experience and technical skills in an AI-enabled environment.
- Assess tasks for their potential to be supported or augmented by AI-enabled systems.
- Recognize how AI can be applied across manufacturing environments with different levels of technology adoption.
- Identify opportunities to work effectively with AI tools while supporting safety, quality and productivity goals.
Start Your AI Training Journey
Ready to bring AI skills to your production workforce? Tell us about your company and the MI will help you get your employees started — and keep you posted as new courses launch.
The same short form works for every audience — tell us who you are and the MI team will follow up with everything you need to get learners started.
Sign up for updates on the AI Skills Initiative.
About the AI Skills Initiative
The Manufacturing Institute’s AI Skills Initiative is preparing current and future manufacturing workers for an AI-enabled future. Through manufacturing-focused AI education and training, the initiative aims to equip more than 40,000 workers and students with the knowledge and confidence needed to thrive in an increasingly AI-enabled manufacturing workforce.
This work is possible thanks to Google.org, whose funding and partnership support the MI’s work to develop the AI Skills Initiative.
Explore the initiative: AI Skills Training overview · For Education Providers · For Associations
