Give it the real context
Describe the intended customer, product, constraints, stage, and uncertainties. Keep those facts attached to the project so the next question starts from a better foundation.
WORKING WITH AI
Better questions.
More useful answers.
Help AI understand the project, explore the details, and prepare work you can actually use.
IDEAS. DIRECTION. FORWARD PROGRESS.ADVANCE NOW / MIKE MAIER
BEYOND A QUICK QUESTION
A conversation is useful.
A process takes it further.
Drill into the answer
Ask what is missing, what assumptions were made, what alternatives exist, and what evidence would change the conclusion. Follow the important questions into more detail.
Check the foundations
Review sources, dates, calculations, and assumptions. Identify when an answer is a useful draft and when it needs testing or a specialist’s judgment.
Turn it into the next step
Convert useful research into requirements, comparison notes, a draft brief, questions for an adviser, or a task with a clear owner.
WHERE THE VALUE CAN COME FROM
Do more preparation.
Reduce avoidable rework.
AI can help with the work around a decision. Experience helps decide what work is worth doing.
Early product research, requirement drafts, document organization, option comparisons, and planning can consume substantial time. We look for places where AI can make that work easier and less expensive.
Questions about companies, liability, patents, funding, and sales depend on your situation and can change over time. We help you investigate them and prepare for informed conversations, rather than treating a generic answer as the final word.
The same approach is useful in an established manufacturing or engineering team: choose a real task, provide the context, check the result, and keep what works.
START WITH THE JOB
Your team. Your data.
Your real questions.
Hands-on team training
Work through technical questions, supplier documents, quality records, and engineering tasks together. Learn to supply context, break work into steps, and recognize an answer that needs checking.
AI opportunity review
Look across the operation for tasks where AI can help: repeated analysis, document preparation, information retrieval, and administrative handoffs. Prioritize usefulness and effort.
Guided implementation
Develop a repeatable workflow around a real task, with clear inputs, review points, and an owner. Help the team use it and refine it as the work changes.
WHAT WE CAN WORK ON
Useful places to begin.
Manufacturing & quality
- Explore trends in scrap, downtime, cycle time, and test results.
- Organize historical records so related information can be compared.
- Draft work instructions from an experienced person’s explanation.
- Prepare structured troubleshooting questions and follow-up checks.
Engineering & office work
- Compare requirements, specifications, and supplier responses.
- Turn meeting notes into decisions, actions, and open questions.
- Build focused calculations, reports, and task helpers.
- Improve project handoffs and reduce repeated data entry.
JUDGMENT STILL MATTERS
Learn to evaluate the answer.
A convincing answer is a starting point. The job is knowing whether it holds up.
My Six Sigma and manufacturing background shapes how I teach AI: inspect the source, check units and assumptions, distinguish correlation from cause, and test the result against the process.
We also decide what information belongs in the tool and which actions need review. Your team should understand the workflow well enough to catch an error and keep working when a tool changes.
BUILT WITH AI
Learning by building
something that has to work.
Project management systems
Organizing work, responsibilities, decisions, and project information. Building software means thinking through how people actually use it, including the handoffs and exceptions.
Sales outreach systems
Bringing structure to research, prospect information, and follow-up work. The practical questions include what information belongs in the system and what needs a person’s review.
Time tracking & invoicing
Connecting work performed to the records a business needs. These builds make accuracy, usability, and clear workflow rules part of the development process.
Tools for a specific task
Applying the same approach to a calculation, report, comparison, or repeatable workflow. Start with a concrete need and test the result against that need.
WHAT GOING DEEPER LOOKS LIKE
From a broad question
to useful work.
THE STARTING QUESTION
“How do I get my product made?”
A broad question can get you a broad checklist. That can be useful, but it does not yet account for your product.
THE NEXT LAYER
Give the project its context.
What must it do? Who uses it? How many might be needed? What are the materials, loads, environment, budget, and unknowns? Which of these are facts, and which are guesses?
THE USEFUL WORK
Make the next decision clearer.
Develop a draft requirements list. Compare possible processes. Identify missing information. Prepare questions for a manufacturer. Decide what a prototype needs to prove.
THE CHECK
Test the answer against the job.
Review sources and assumptions. Ask what could make the recommendation wrong. Bring the right specialist into the questions that need more than an AI response.
PEOPLE, NOT JUST PROMPTS
Help the person
use the tool better.
The lasting benefit is knowing how to investigate the next question yourself.
I can help you learn to explain the problem, build useful project context, follow up on incomplete answers, and recognize when the work needs a fresh approach.
For a team, that can become a repeatable way of working: useful source material, shared instructions, clear review points, and examples of what a good result looks like.
For an inventor, it can mean arriving at a conversation with a designer, supplier, or adviser better prepared—with specific questions and a clearer explanation of what you need.
MY AI JOURNEY
From a better conversation
to a coordinated project.
The most important learning came after I stopped treating AI as a question-and-answer tool.
I moved into engineering workspaces with larger collections of project documents, learned to divide tasks around the limits of working context, and developed an approach using continuing specialist roles and temporary “intern” agents.
Written procedures, complete task briefs, reviewed handoffs, and maintained records bring structure to the work. It is closely related to how I’ve managed people, improved production, and coordinated product development.
Read the journey and working methodWORK WITH MIKE
If you’d like
my help, I’m here.
My personal consulting is a premium service for people and organizations that want my direct involvement. If your budget is tight, start with AN Creation. The resource is there to help you make progress without hiring me.
Talk with MikeMANUFACTURING THINKING / PRACTICAL AI
You may know more
of this than you think.
If you have managed a plant-floor handoff, maintained setup records, or improved a process, you have a useful starting point for AI.
The words can make it feel foreign: artifacts, nodes, edges, agents. Underneath are familiar questions about records, work steps, routing, responsibilities, and review.
My job is to help connect those ideas to work you already understand, then put AI to use in a way you can examine and improve.