Global Lighthouse Network 2026

AUO Corporation’s virtual supervisor assistant for task orchestration FIGURE 14 Business-backed innovation to resist shiny objects The rapid advancement of AI is inspiring Lighthouses to think strategically about how they rewire their operations. Though inference costs are dropping, the cost of training AI models has skyrocketed – from a few hundred dollars for early models to tens or even hundreds of millions for today’s large foundation models. To stay competitive, Lighthouses are reserving larger, more expensive models for critical tasks with direct business impact.34 AUO Corporation deployed an AI-enabled virtual supervisor assistant to free up valuable time, now dedicated to frontline coaching and complex problem-solving (Figure 14). The “AgentX” platform integrates LLMs and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to support intelligent assistants across key areas, including quality, equipment and safety. The platform monitors production data in real-time and automatically generates anomaly alerts, task assignments and resolution recommendations.35 The rise of AI-enabled “virtual assistants” shows how technology can amplify the human core of operations. By automating repetitive monitoring and administrative work, these systems free frontline leaders to focus on coaching, problem-solving and continuous improvement – the very levers of resilience. Lighthouses demonstrate that when AI Agents ar e built on separate systems to mitigate softwar e and har dwar e performance constraints mroftalp tnega IA + LLMs User requestsSchedule tasksSystem calls Manual requestsWeekly reportsAlerts Daily reportsRCPSVisual overviews?RequestsWinning factors — Made available to 80 fr ontline leaders — 2,500 hits every day — Specialized assistants for dif ferent tasks Technology stack mroftalp egdelwonk lanretn I atad rosnes To I atad ytilau Q PR E R HAI agent platform OEE Main losses Suggestions HR agentEquipment agent Quality agent Safety agentSmart agent ... “Show the OEE from last 7 days and main losses”" ... ... In-house developmentAI-enabled virtual supervisor assistant GenAI transforms supervisor r oles fr om “doers” to “or chestrators”. V irtual assistants r educe r eporting, planning and analytics workloads, with a human-in-the-loop for pr ecise decision-making. Instead of a generalized AI, specialized systems optimize performance for specific tasks, addr essing computing power constraints. V irtual teams r eceive performance evaluations, feedback and “pr omotions" to maintain team cohesion.-74% ’sredael eniltnorF turnover rate+200% ’sredael eniltnorF coaching time-71% eniltnorF leaders’ admin workloadAUO Corporation Suzhou, China Notes: OEE = overall equipment effectiveness, RCPS = resource-constrained project scheduling. Source: Global Lighthouse Network. Global Lighthouse Network: Rewiring Operations for Resilience and Impact at Scale 24