Throughout the summer, Manufacturing Dive has done Q&A interviews with a host of industry leaders and experts to learn more about changing technology trends. Artificial intelligence, automation, data and labor remain top of mind.
You can catch up on their views of these trends, as well as read the broader interviews, below.
Do you have thoughts on how these trends are affecting your business? Contact us at [email protected].
Praveen Rao, global head of manufacturing at Google Cloud
MANUFACTURING DIVE: If you could change one thing about manufacturing, what would it be and why?
RAO: I would probably make it more multimodal. The manufacturing industry traditionally has been dealing with structured data, and then some unstructured data with manuals and other things. But we live in a live world.
If you walk into a shop floor, the machines are buzzing, screaming. They have the noise, they have vibration, they have harmonics. Why are we not taking advantage of all that? And without a doubt you absolutely can, because the stronger the context you have, the better your actions are going to be.
Just like how Industry 4.0 makes OT and IT, I truly believe the future is multimodal and that's where you would see some of our products.
They can understand things in their native modality, whether it's processing the videos or processing the noise vibrations. We don't convert that to text and analyze like the way some people are doing. We can look at a CAD drawing and really understand what you're trying to do. We can create different variations to make sure it's manufacturable. We can even tell you what's the likelihood of this getting damaged when you transport it. And we can tell you how sustainable this is when you ship a product. There are so many capabilities out there.
Brett Velicovich, cofounder of Powerus
MANUFACTURING DIVE: How is your company investing in advanced technology and automation?
VELICOVICH: Powerus is investing in advanced manufacturing technologies, including automation, digital production workflows, and robotics where they improve throughput, quality, and repeatability. The goal is not replacing people — it’s enabling faster scaling, more consistent production, and reducing bottlenecks in critical manufacturing steps.
Ignacio Basualdo, connected services digital product manager at Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Solutions
MANUFACTURING DIVE: How is your company using AI, and how are you adapting to workforce trends?
BASUALDO: We're leveraging AI to enhance our institutional knowledge and manage it across our sales and support service teams. We’re also helping customers be more proactive in their operations, rather than reactive, by using AI-enabled intelligent monitoring.
As organizations adopt more automation and connected technologies, there is an increased demand for workers and expertise in areas such as systems integration, data analytics and industrial automation. In the pump industry, we're also seeing a need for skilled technicians and engineers who understand not only the pump technology itself and the fluid handling systems that we are experts in, but also how those systems integrate with increasingly automated and connected manufacturing environments.
Kathie Mahoney, president of MassMEP
MANUFACTURING DIVE: We hear a lot of talk about robotics and AI. At the same time, we hear plenty of small and medium companies don’t want to do it yet. What are you seeing in Massachusetts on that front?
MAHONEY: Anecdotally, it’s the same. It’s a lot of they don’t know what they don’t know. It’s how do we implement the technologies in the most efficient way for each facility, and it may not be the same for every facility. You may need sensors on your machine for one, whereas another you may want to measure the weight of a product.
That’s where the MEP centers are so valuable and so unique versus a traditional consultant.
All of our employees that go and do the training and the work within the manufacturing facility have a manufacturing background. So they have all been there. They understand it, they’ve done the work.
Ali Miller, CEO of Furnace Record Pressing
MANUFACTURING DIVE: Does Furnace plan to invest in robotics or automation?
MILLER: No, I don’t think so. I think final record pressing is one of those trades that you’re not too worried about [artificial intelligence] is going to come and take your job, which is a lucky place to be in the modern world.
I know that there are some plants that certainly use robotics or automation, in terms of [sleeving] a record on press, so it presses and it goes into a sleeve via metal arm. For us, it’s really important to look at every record. It’s part of our quality standard. We really stand strongly behind the idea that great records are made by great people, not great robots.
It’s an art, it’s a craft, and that requires people.
