For decades, the promise of the digital factory was simple: more data equals more efficiency. Yet, as discussed at the ARC Industry Leadership Forum 2026, many manufacturers find themselves trapped in a productivity paradox. Despite having more sensors and dashboards than ever, teams are spending more time reconciling information than building products.To break this cycle, […]
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A predictive maintenance system flags that a motor will fail in three weeks. What happens next usually involves three to four people, spans up to two weeks, and touches the CMMS, ERP, workforce scheduling, and production planning systems before a single wrench turns. Agentic AI compresses that entire coordination chain into roughly 30 seconds. During […]
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Agentic AI will bring thousands, potentially tens of thousands, of AI agents to the factory floor. Every one of them will need data, and not all data. Agents do not perform well when exposed to massive amounts. They need focused, usable data scoped to their task. So, how much should manufacturers let them do without […]
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Software-defined automation moves control logic from dedicated PLCs onto industrial PCs and standard server hardware, while the physical equipment, inputs/outputs, drives, and motors, stays on the shop floor. Engineering changes too, from predefined toolchains with fixed workflows to an open system where teams connect Siemens, third-party, and OEM tools through APIs and a package management […]
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At an IIoT World Energy Day 2026 panel on scalable edge solutions for modern grids, Andrew Foster of IOTech Systems, Cody Falcon of ABB, Brenna Wood of EDF Power Solutions North America, and Janko Isidorovic of Fluence Energy discussed what distributed energy resource fleets require before edge AI can produce useful results. The panel, moderated […]
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Most manufacturers face the same starting point: brownfield operations with equipment from multiple vendors and departments that work toward different objectives. The scope of what needs connecting creates enough resistance that many companies never take the first step. At Hannover Messe 2026, Thomas Roehrl of Siemens described this as the biggest mistake in platform deployment: […]
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At an IIoT World Manufacturing Day panel on data sovereignty and industrial AI, Peter Sorowka of Cybus and leaders from MaibornWolff, SCHUNK, and Schwarz Digits outlined how competitive advantage in manufacturing is forming well before AI reaches full deployment. Many manufacturers are waiting for clearer AI winners, the right platform, the right models, the right […]
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ABB resolves 80% of measurement device faults through an AI copilot, without a support call. HighByte compressed Alcon’s one-year plant-wide digital transformation to less than one month. InfluxData and Litmus take manufacturers from three sites to 300, with positive ROI in 60 to 90 days. Cybus reports 9% less downtime and 23% lower cloud costs […]
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During the “Edge AI: Driving Smarter Machine Health Monitoring for Energy Infrastructure” panel at IIoT World Energy Day 2026, poll results showed that most energy operators are just beginning to explore AI for asset monitoring. Some have completed a first deployment, but only a small percentage have scaled these solutions across multiple assets or sites. […]
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Anthony Vigliotti, Chief Product Officer at Adlib, identifies a foundational distinction in enterprise AI that most industrial organizations have not yet fully reckoned with. In brownfield manufacturing and regulated industrial operations, the cost of that gap is becoming harder to ignore.The distinction is this: a document can be treated as a data source, or it […]
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Factories generate massive volumes of time series data from every sensor, controller, and production line, but many manufacturers reduce the fidelity of that data or discard it entirely because their existing infrastructure makes retention too expensive or too difficult. “It always pains me to see customers reducing fidelity or throwing data away for resource or […]
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Gil Silva, Partnership, Learning & Development Manager at Coreflux, walked through a live demo at Hannover Messe 2026 where a Raspberry Pi running the company’s Language of Things processed factory data, managed energy systems, and communicated with machines in real time. The Porto-based startup has built a system that lets someone automate a factory floor […]
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