Open training · Athens

Boost Efficiency with AI Tools

Two days. Hands-on. You leave with a working AI agent.

A practical AI course for operations people, not developers — built by an operational excellence consultancy that has spent twenty-two years measuring processes on factory floors across 29 countries.

Reserve your placeSee the two-day agenda

4,000+ professionals trained · 29 countries · since 2004

Dates
7–8 October 2026 · Wednesday & Thursday
City
Athens, Greece
Duration
2 full days
Level
No programming experience required
Language
To be confirmed
Investment
To be confirmed

What you walk out with

Not a certificate about a case study. Things you can use on Monday.

  • 01

    A working AI agent

    You build one during the course, publish it, and understand how to supervise it. Not a slide about agents — an agent.

  • 02

    Analysis without a licence

    Python running inside the Excel you already have. Charts, statistics and data cleaning that keep working after the course ends.

  • 03

    A clear mental model of AI

    What a language model can and cannot be trusted with, explained without hype, so you can judge tools and vendors yourself.

  • 04

    A shortlist for your own operation

    You work on your own pain points during the exercises, so you leave with candidate use cases ranked by feasibility.

  • 05

    The rules that keep you safe

    Where AI must never be used — quality records, critical decisions — and what to do instead. In a regulated plant, this is the valuable half.

The two days

Day one builds the foundation and the toolkit. Day two turns it into analysis and agents.

Day 1

Wednesday 7 October

Foundations, AI and Python

  1. Business excellence & structured problem solving

    • Operational excellence as a management system, not a toolkit
    • The eight wastes, Y = f(x) and the change equation R = Q × A
    • Why you cannot automate a broken process
    • Structured problem solving applied to a challenge you bring

  2. Introduction to artificial intelligence

    • How a language model actually works — and why it is not a search engine
    • RAG: getting answers out of your own documents
    • Public tools versus your company data boundary
    • Seven principles of responsible use, and where to start versus where not to

  3. Python and Python in Excel

    • Python for people who do not program
    • Running Python inside Excel: data in, charts and results out
    • pandas, matplotlib, seaborn and scipy.stats — what each is for

Day 2

Thursday 8 October

Data and agents

  1. Extract information from your data

    • What data a process improvement actually needs, and how to collect it
    • Time series, histograms, Pareto, box plots and scatter plots
    • Correlation and its limits — reading charts without fooling yourself
    • Hands-on with real operational datasets

  2. AI agents

    • From chatbot to agent: autonomy, tools and oversight
    • Writing agent instructions that survive contact with reality
    • Build, publish and operate your own agent
    • The Andon agent: what should happen when a line stops

  3. Closing: from course to results

    • Turning your shortlist into a first proof of concept
    • What it takes to make the change stick: D × V × F > R
    • Measuring the return so the next one gets approved

Exact session times are confirmed with registered participants. Each day mixes short inputs with hands-on exercises on your own data.

Why this course and not a generic AI workshop

There are plenty of AI courses. Almost none of them are taught by people who have spent two decades on a factory floor.

  • It starts with the problem

    The first module is structured problem solving, because AI aimed at an undefined problem on unstable data just produces confident nonsense faster. We are an operations consultancy first.

  • No licence, no gatekeeping

    The analysis runs in Excel with Python instead of a specialist statistics licence that lives on three machines in the quality department. The capability stays with you.

  • It tells you where to stop

    We are explicit about what AI must not touch: anything that becomes an official record needs validated systems and human sign-off. That honesty is why quality departments let us in.

Worked example you will build on

The Andon agent

When a line stops, most of the useful work is gathering: what stopped, what was running, who needs to know, what happened last time. That is exactly what an agent can do while people deal with the machine.

  • Captures the stoppage in a consistent structure instead of a free-text note
  • Pulls the relevant history so nobody rediscovers a known failure mode
  • Notifies the right people and logs the event where it can be analysed
  • Leaves the diagnosis, the decision and the official record to the humans

Who should come

People who own a process and are tired of waiting for the roadmap.

  • Operations, production and plant managers
  • Quality and continuous improvement specialists
  • Supply chain and logistics leads
  • Engineers and process specialists
  • Green Belts, Black Belts and improvement project leaders
  • Managers who will have to govern how AI is used
Fotis Christodoulopoulos

Who is teaching

Fotis Christodoulopoulos

Managing Partner, Digital Transformation · Kairos Management

A degree in telecommunications engineering, an MBA, and in-depth know-how of information technology. Over ten years in senior management positions in manufacturing before moving into consulting.

Since then: over 200 projects led in six languages, as a Master Black Belt and Scrum Master, focused on operational and process excellence and Industry 4.0. Visiting lecturer on digital transformation at IESE.

Over thirty years of experience in industry — and the reason this course is about your process, not about the technology.

Practical details

Venue
To be confirmed
Address
To be confirmed
Daily schedule
To be confirmed
Places
To be confirmed
Registration deadline
To be confirmed

What is included

  • Two full days of training with a maximum group size that keeps it hands-on
  • The complete course material in digital form
  • Exercise datasets and reusable Excel templates you keep
  • Your own AI agent, built and published during the course
  • Certificate of attendance

7–8 October 2026 · Athens

Two days that change how your team works with data

Tell us who is coming and we will confirm your place, the venue and the schedule.

Reserve your placeSee the programmes

Group size is capped to keep the exercises hands-on. Early enquiries get priority.