Boosting efficiency and enabling innovation potential through employee empowerment
Employees of Stadtwerke Bielefeld were able to actively engage with artificial intelligence and develop forward-looking ideas for the organization as part of “AI Kickbox”, a 16-week structured innovation and training process.
Stadtwerke Bielefeld GmbH is a municipal utility and service company active in the areas of electricity, gas, drinking water, and heat supply. With five subsidiaries, it also provides Bielefeld with telecommunications, mobility, network infrastructure, swimming pools, and waste disposal services. A total of 1,240 employees work for Stadtwerke Bielefeld in a wide variety of departments.
The project at a glance
- More than 30 employees from various departments of Stadtwerke Bielefeld were given practical training in the field of artificial intelligence.
- The opportunity to participate in shaping the organization's future, as well as actively engaging with AI, helps to sustainably promote the acceptance of forward-looking technologies.
- The knowledge was put to direct use in the development of more than ten innovative solutions that address problems in the participants' day-to-day work.
- As a technology partner, codecentric was able to advise on the full range of innovations: from time series forecasting, computer vision and image analysis to knowledge management and the use of language models and generative AI.
Initial situation
Artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay. Stadtwerke Bielefeld faces the challenge of enabling its employees to use AI in their everyday work and to exploit the potential of this new technology for themselves. One primary objective was to reduce employees' skepticism about the use of AI in their daily work.
Initial steps in the field of AI have already been taken in the organization, yet the topic was not yet present across the breadth of the company. AI training therefore needed to do more than just look at a solution to a specific problem in isolation; it needed to strengthen employees' innovative abilities and use them to develop a wide range of topics for the future.
Solution
All employees of the Stadtwerke Bielefeld were invited to take part in the AI Kickbox, a 16-week innovation and training program designed to help them learn more about AI and innovation methods and use AI to solve a problem in their organization.
The AI Kickbox was developed by codecentric partner tomorrow bird and is designed to empower employees in companies to profitably exploit the potential of AI. The program takes the participants through the following levels:
- Learning
- Problem
- Solution
- Testing
- Planning
- Pitching
The participants move from an initial idea to an implementable, AI-supported solution. codecentric is a strong technology partner at tomorrow bird’s side in this program, contributing extensive expertise and practical experience to a program that empowers participants to build up their own AI expertise.
Knowledge transfer included three three-hour workshops in which theory and practical exercises were shared on the following topics:
Workshop 1: The importance of artificial intelligence is growing in today's world, but how does AI work? What are the opportunities, what are the possible risks?
Workshop 2: AI in practice: what does an AI project look like in practice? What are use cases? What problems can (and cannot) be solved by AI? How can I assess the use of AI?
Workshop 3: What are the guard rails governing AI? How can a culture of data be established? Should AI be regulated?
tomorrow bird accompanied the participants through the program and worked closely with them on the ideas that were developed. Assumptions were checked and solutions refined The participants formed teams to work together on the ideas identified as valuable. tomorrow bird provided coaching and a structured program to help them identify and refine the added value of each individual idea.
codecentric's focus during the 16 weeks was on providing technical advice to the teams and testing feasibility. The ideas were in different fields of application of artificial intelligence, including
- Forecasts of time series in the energy market
- Generative AI in marketing
- Smart knowledge management
- Computer vision use cases
- Prompt engineering
codecentric was able to provide suitable expertise in all areas and advised on the feasibility, recommended next steps, and estimated costs for implementing the solutions. codecentric also built the initial prototypes.
Result
The program included workshops to introduce the 30 employees of the Stadtwerke Bielefeld municipal utility to the topic of artificial intelligence. The knowledge acquired regarding the possibilities and opportunities for using AI could be used directly in the development of solutions to implement the ideas they had developed themselves. Skepticism towards the pioneering technology was dispelled.
At the end of the 16 weeks, ten ideas were developed and pitched to a jury. The fields of application for the use of AI spanned the entire organization: with the topics ranging from controlling the waste incinerator, to forecasting the energy market, and customer services in public transport.
The most valuable ideas and the solutions developed on their basis were transferred to a roadmap for the further realization and development of MVPs. It was possible to dispel a great deal of skepticism and build enthusiasm for the possibilities by involving employees in the introduction of AI-supported solutions from the very beginning.
Timm Niestrad
Head of Digitalization, Stadtwerke Bielefeld
codecentric supported us throughout the entire AI Kickbox with extensive expertise in all areas of artificial intelligence, regardless of the specific form or field of application of this technology. Its broad expertise enabled our employees to always be given the right advice for the implementation of various AI ideas. A cooperative atmosphere of mutual respect prevailed not only during the individual coaching sessions for the teams but also in the introductory workshops for knowledge transfer. This meant that even our non-technical employees gained a comprehensive understanding of AI within a short period of time.
Timm Niestrad
Head of Digitalization, Stadtwerke Bielefeld
Do you have more questions about the project?
Would you like to advance the productive use of generative AI in your business and need support with the first steps? Please feel free to contact me about this or any other questions you may have on the topic of artificial intelligence.
Market Lead Energy & Utilities
Other codecentric AG projects
Find out about other successful projects that we have completed with our clients. Perhaps you will find ideas here for a use case in your own organization.
Stefan Ebersold
Market Lead Energy & Utilities