TUE AM News: Oshkosh Corp. exec predicts major leap in productivity due to AI; Evers signs child care tax credit bill

March 5, 2024

— Oshkosh Corporation expects to see a significant leap in productivity as the manufacturing business adopts more AI technology.

Anupam Khare, senior vice president and chief information officer for Oshkosh Corp., yesterday discussed the company’s tech-focused strategy during a meeting of the Governor’s Task Force on Workforce and Artificial Intelligence.

While the business has already been incorporating industrial automation for decades, its fledgling relationship with artificial intelligence will take time to scale up in a major way, Khare told task force members. But he underlined its importance for the growing company, which produces military vehicles, specialty trucks and other machinery.

“I think three or four years ago, we were a $7 billion company, now we’re a $10 billion company,” he said. “We have two years of backlog. We have always 500 to 800 opening roles which we are not able to fill. We need efficiencies and productivity.”

The company began incorporating AI in 2019, starting with automating simple tasks and then moving to virtual conversation “bots” that facilitate employee contact with the company’s service desk as well as customer service call centers. After that, Oshkosh Corp. began using AI for predictive analytics, processing massive amounts of data to identify patterns.

The company is employing AI data analytics to optimize shipping container utilization, reducing the likelihood of human error while improving how that space is being used, Khare noted. The Parts Alignment and Calculation Tool, or PACT, has resulted in containers being packed 15 times faster along with reduced carbon emissions and transportation costs, according to his presentation.

“We have roughly 200 active algorithms working and making recommendations on many decisions,” he said.

Oshkosh Corp.’s current phase of adoption is focused on generative AI, which can produce sophisticated text, images, videos and more based on user prompts. The business is currently working with Microsoft and California-based OpenAI on this stage, Khare said.

One application aims to streamline the work done by Oshkosh’s more than 50 buyers, who routinely email and call thousands of parts vendors.

“Now we have a bot which basically writes an email for them, follows up and the email comes, the bot reads the email and does the job,” Khare said. “So we were spending 100 hours a day on just follow-up, which our buyers didn’t like. And now this is being done by bots in less than five minutes.”

The business has identified 40 use cases for generative AI, five of which are in development.

Watch a video of the task force meeting at WisconsinEye.

— Gov. Tony Evers has signed a GOP bill to expand the state’s credit for child and dependent care expenses. But Evers urged lawmakers to do more, saying the legislation alone wasn’t enough to provide parents affordable options.

Evers called for additional state funding for programs such as the subsidies that he’s proposed for child care providers, arguing it is essential to avoid additional centers closing.

“Wisconsin simply cannot afford to lose more child care providers or more workers from our workforce,” Evers said yesterday during a signing ceremony in Waukesha. “Folks, those things go hand-in-hand.”

The move comes after Evers on Friday vetoed three other GOP tax bills that were part of a package Republicans put together this year. The expanded child and dependent care bill was the least expensive of the nearly $2.1 billion package Republicans sent to the guv, and it was the only one of the four that received significant bipartisan support.

Republicans continued to knock the guv for his Friday vetoes. Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August, R-Lake Geneva, touted the impact of the three proposed tax cuts that the guv rejected. He noted the state was projected to finish the 2023-25 biennium with a more than $3 billion surplus and Republicans wanted to get the money out of Madison “before it could be wasted on unneeded government expansion and pet projects of special interests groups. “

“The price of everything is up due to inflation and mismanagement in Washington,” August said. “If the governor would get out of Madison and into reality, he’d realize how much families and seniors need tax relief.”

Previously, the state’s nonrefundable credit for child and dependent care expenses equaled up to 50% of the federal credit claimed on a filer’s return. The bill Evers signed expands that to 100% of the federal credit claimed.

According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the move will reduce individual income tax collections by $72.9 million annually, beginning in 2024-25.

The average decrease would be $656 annually. Those with adjusted gross incomes below $100,000 would account for 34.2% of the filers who qualify, with an average decrease of $453. Those with incomes above $100,000 will account for 65.8% of those impacted, with an average reduction of $762, according to LFB.

Altogether, the expanded break is projected to impact more than 111,000 Wisconsin filers.

See the Evers release.

— Dem lawmakers are circulating a bill that would allow Wisconsin towns to issue an additional Class B liquor license.

In a co-sponsorship memo sent to other lawmakers, Reps. Dave Considine of Baraboo and Clinton Anderson of Beloit note the number of Class B liquor licenses granted to municipalities is determined in part by population.

“We have heard from many business owners in small towns who have been unable to get a license due to the current regulations … Many rural areas have no way to get another license without a change to the law,” they wrote in the memo. “Most townships in Wisconsin face population stagnation, decreases, or slow growth.”

Class B licenses allow the holder to sell liquor for consumption at the retail location and elsewhere with some restrictions. The current quota for these licenses is based on a formula that captures the number of licenses previously issued by the municipality as well as the local population, according to the Legislative Reference Bureau.

The bill would allow towns in the state to issue one additional Class B license on top of the number authorized under the state quota formula, LRB wrote in the memo.

“LRB-1930 will help keep our smaller rural communities successful and strong,” the lawmakers wrote. “This increase in access will stimulate our local economies and small businesses.”

The co-sponsorship deadline is 5 p.m. Thursday.

See the memo.

— ATC Vice President of Regulatory and Government Affairs Ellen Nowak says, “we’ve had really great conversations” with Gov. Tony Evers’ office about legislation that would give existing utilities priority to decide if they want to construct, own and maintain new transmission lines.

The fate of the bill, though, is uncertain in the state Senate after it passed the Assembly on a voice vote.

“It kind of changes on a day-to-day basis,” Nowak told “UpFront” when asked what senators they are still specifically pursuing.

American Transmission Co. has spent hundreds of hours lobbying for the legislation. Opponents argue the legislation will stifle competition and lead to higher costs for ratepayers.

“It’s written in the bill that we have to competitively bid these projects,” said Nowak, a former Public Service Commission member and Department of Administration secretary under former GOP Gov. Scott Walker. “That’s a change we made from last session. Like I said, it’s a practice we’ve always done, but it’s not stifling competition.”

“What this bill does is opt us out of a federal process that they’ve called competition,” Nowak said. “But I call it a very long, protracted federal bureaucratic process.”

Following Nowak’s appearance on “UpFront,” the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group Inc. called on the Senate to reject ROFR.

The groups, which often represent customers before the Public Service Commission, argued AB 470 would block companies not already providing transmissions in the state from competing for projects, creating a construction monopoly that would drive up costs.

They added Wisconsin’s electric rates already rank among the top 15 states nationally and have exceeded the Midwest average for more than 20 years, acting like a tax on manufacturers and homeowners.

See the release.

Top headlines from the Health Care Report…

— ThedaCare has launched a new pharmacy service at its Neenah facility, the health system announced.

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