Buy manufacturing monitoring software when speed, total cost, and reliability matter and monitoring is not your core business; build only when you have a truly unique need no vendor meets and a team to maintain it for the system’s entire life. For most...
You measure automation success against the baseline you captured before go-live, using a tight set of KPIs: OEE and its components, unplanned downtime, MTTR and MTBF, scrap rate, and realised payback versus the business case. Going live is not success – a...
The defining manufacturing automation trends of 2026 are agentic and generative AI on the shop floor, predictive maintenance replacing calendar servicing, real-time OEE and connected-worker tools, cobots, and a hard focus on data integrity. The common thread:...
Industrial automation is the use of control systems, sensors, software and machines to run manufacturing processes with minimal human intervention – aiming for consistent quality, higher output, and lower losses. It ranges from one automated machine to a fully...
Traditional automation follows fixed rules a human programs in advance and excels at repetitive, predictable tasks; AI automation learns from data and adapts, so it can predict failures and handle variation no one scripted. Most factories do not choose one –...
When evaluating an automation or robotics vendor, score them on outcome fit, time-to-value, integration with your existing machines, data integrity, scalability, support, and verifiable references – not on feature lists. Run a pilot before you commit. This guide...
