In this episode of “The Future Of,” host Jeff Dance engages with manufacturing experts Suzy Teele, Jeff Winter, and Marco Micheletti to explore the future of factories. They discuss the shift of manufacturing back to the U.S., the relevance of automation and AI, workforce challenges, and strategies for fostering innovation. Key insights include the critical role of technology and data in transforming manufacturing, and the importance of attracting young talent to the sector.

Jeff Dance: In this episode of “The Future Of,” we’re joined by three manufacturing experts to discuss the future of factories. 

Jeff Dance: Because we have three guests today, I’d like to do some brief intros. Suzy, the Chief Strategy Officer at the ARM Institute, which is the Institute for Advanced Robotics and Manufacturing. In her role at the ARM Institute as a Chief Strategy Officer, she drives the overall strategy. She’s been instrumental in starting it and growing it to more than 450 organizations. She also leads the Institute’s satellite office in the Tampa Bay region of Florida. Recently, Suzy was named to the Association for Advanced Automation’s Robotics Technology Strategy Board, and she has over 30 years of experience in technology-based businesses as an executive. So grateful to have you with us here, Suzy.

Jeff Winter is an advisor to CESMII for smart manufacturing. He’s also a top influencer in the space globally. And as I mentioned, he’s also the VP of business strategy for critical manufacturing. He almost has 20 years of experience in space working for industrial automation, product and solution providers, educating and inspiring others on the shop floor to the boardroom. And as part of his experience, Jeff is also very active in the community of Industry 4.0. Grateful to have you here, Jeff.

And Marco, our robotics and automation director here at Fresh Consulting, he brings over 20 years of experience also in managing engineering and manufacturing teams. He’s done a lot of exciting work throughout his career. He’s led teams shipping, iconic and innovative products at places like Nike, Valve, and Microsoft.

Jeff Winter: Thank you.

Why manufacturing?

Jeff Dance: He’s also driven a lot of automation product development supply chain in manufacturing for products like Xbox, Nike’s GPS watch, Fuel Bands, Steam Controller, and Steam VR kits. Some really sophisticated companies where he’s done a lot of sophisticated work in advanced manufacturing, even the likes of autonomous vehicle solutions. We’re grateful to have you guys all here. I’m just curious, what brought you into this space? You’re all pretty deep into this space. What got you excited about manufacturing and automation, being in the factory and being able to work on the ground level, but also the high-level strategy?

Suzy Teele: I’m happy to go first. For me, it was really coming full circle. I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the 1960s and 1970s when manufacturing was king. In fact, the first aluminum company in the United States was in my hometown. What eventually grew into Alcoa. And so I saw the thriving middle class lifestyle that we had and then the horrible lifestyle, unfortunately, that we had when all of the companies left the Pittsburgh area in the late 70s and early 80s, moving to Japan and other areas.

So I saw firsthand the devastation from a healthy middle-class income to one where we had 26% unemployment in the early 80s. And so my career trajectory has always been in tech and working primarily in software, starting software companies and helping to grow software companies. And when this opportunity came along to help start the ARM Institute, I felt like it was a chance for me in my career to finally give back and really try to help revitalize not only my community in the Pittsburgh region, which is where ARM Institute is headquartered, but nationwide and trying to look at ways that we can bring more manufacturing back, but using technology, not cheap labor.

And so for me, it really is a personal opportunity to be able to give back and do some good when it comes to bringing manufacturing back to the United States and growing it.

Jeff Dance: Thank you. Thanks for that story and that passion. Jeff, what about you? What got you into the space?

Jeff Winter: I’ve always been fascinated by how things are made, including in the show, “How It’s Made.” So even though I earned an electrical engineering technology degree from Purdue, I never actually went into any sort of engineering-related role. I went immediately into sales engineering because I wanted to work with many, many, many, many companies on how they were making stuff. And so in my career, I did jobs as a sales engineer. I was in marketing, I was in operations, and now most recently in strategy.

And I’ve done everything from sensors and controls to fluid power and motion to industrial safety. And then in 2018, actually because of my boss at the time, I was assigned this nebulous concept called industry 4.0 that I’d never heard of what it was at the time. Once I learned about it, which is all about all the advanced technologies that are out there to transform the manufacturing industry, I became hooked. And now I love it. I’ve just kind of shifted in my journey as to which technologies and which parts of manufacturing I focused on in my career.

Jeff Dance: That’s awesome. You know, working in the variety of those roles and then with a variety of technologies is such a strong position for strategy work to truly be that tight advisor for companies as they’re thinking about the future. So great to have you here with us. Thank you. Marco, what about you? What brought you into the space?

Marco Micheletti: My story is really similar to Jeff’s. I went to school with a technical background in mechanical engineering and I came out in the aerospace industry and thought it was really cool. I worked with some really great people. I got to actually say I was a rocket scientist. We were building propulsion systems for satellites and all kinds of great things.

And this opportunity came along in the early 2000s for Microsoft to go work on the Xbox. And the decision point was really I got to make maybe a hundred rocket engines a year and that was a big deal. And my friends would never see them or it’s hard to explain like where the things are that work on, you work on, they’re up in space somewhere. Or I could go make 10 million Xboxes next year and have them in everybody’s living room at Christmas time and have that experience with people. And I chose that path to be a little more visible, but a lot like Jeff. I got a lot of exposure to work with suppliers, partners, manufacturers, and it really fed me and was something that was really a wild ride because I still got to do a lot of engineering, a lot of problem solving, but the playground was much bigger. It was the whole world and it was just a lot of fun.

Suzy Teele: The playground was going to figure it out.

“Closer to the customer” — is manufacturing coming back to the US?

Jeff Dance: Thank you. Thanks for that story. As we think about it just at a high level, I want to talk about the current state and then talk about the future. As we think about the current state, for a long time, we were kind of moving some aspect of our manufacturing overseas into different countries. Now it seems like there’s a trend where some of the manufacturing, some of the factory creation is kind of coming back to the US.

I’m curious if you guys would say that is a trend. That is something we’re seeing now and it will be anticipated in the future. Suzy, let’s start with you.

Suzy Teele: Sure. I mean, Jeff can give some more insight on this based on his background. We’ve always been strong in manufacturing, but there are certain things that we learned, especially through the pandemic, that we need that we don’t make in the United States.

And so when we really faced those supply chain challenges five or so years ago, that really put a big impetus on trying to make sure that the things that we deem critical for everyday healthy life in the United States are made here. So that was one key driver.

And the other key driver is, again, back to necessities and what’s critical and none of us, we wouldn’t be talking here today if we didn’t have semiconductors and chips and that whole industry and the majority, overwhelming majority of that comes from Asia.

And so there was a movement underway to build plants here in the United States for more plants for semiconductor development. So those are two strong areas where we’ve seen a lot of work in bringing these capabilities back to really prepare us better than we were prepared through our last global challenge.

Jeff Dance: Great. Any other thoughts from you, Marco or Jeff?

Jeff Winter: Sure, I guess I would say that US manufacturing has gone through massive shifts over the years. I mean, if you look back to the early 1940s, it was kind of the peak in terms of the employment share of the US economy and it was fueled by wartime production. But if you look at the total number of manufacturing jobs, not just the percentage, that actually peaked in the mid to late 1970s. Now, since then, both the percentage and the total number of jobs have declined due to automation, globalization, offshoring, and many other factors.

But the interesting part is while the jobs have declined, output has kept climbing. In fact, the U.S. manufacturing hit an all-time high total output in 2023. I mean, today we have about 13 million people working in over 290,000 factories, making it the country’s fifth-largest employer. But despite concerns about manufacturing decline, the U.S. actually outpaced the rest of the world in growth in 2022.

And for the first time since the late 1970s, employment even surpassed the last business cycle’s peak. But what’s interesting is you probably don’t realize is the amount of innovation that’s flowing in or money that’s flowing into R&D into manufacturing. Most people don’t realize that. The last report I had on this was from 2021 and there were $602 billion put into R&D in the United States of which more than half, 326 billion was spent on manufacturing. And the result of that? Well, if you look at Boston Consulting Group’s top 50 most innovative companies out there, 34 of them are manufacturers. And that’s their primary business. There were six more that I would argue are manufacturers, it’s just not their primary business. So that would mean that 40 of the 50 had manufacturing as a part of their business. Now, in more recent times, yes, since the pandemic and other things that are happening geopolitically, where locations are sprouting up.

Jeff Dance: Amazing.

Jeff Winter: Are changing for a variety of reasons. The decisions to be closer to the supplier, closer to the customer. We are seeing in certain industries, yes, more desire to have more control over the supply chain or the entire value chain. And so, yes, I would say in short, we’re seeing more desire to have local manufacturing.

Jeff Dance: Great. Marco, anything to add? And also curious on some of the problems you think that are accelerating some of the shift.

Marco Micheletti: I think like everyone said in summary, some of this globalization and outsourcing did start with the semiconductor industry in the 70s, 80s and continued. And what we see is the innovative processes being funded either through government mechanisms or profits of innovative companies, private industry are starting here. And that’s where the start of this high level of innovation is. So we’re always going to be involved in it from the start. And that drives through the industries and the different marketplaces and geographies in the US.

But there is a total cost of ownership framework and there’s eight or so factors. And if you’re paying attention to all of them, like Jeff is saying, we need to manage our risks, we need to manage our supply chains. Lowest possible cost is not the lowest total cost. When we can’t get our products, things get really expensive. And as folks in the manufacturing industry, we have to be really cognizant of all those factors.

So one of the challenges is, I think we get reminded of these things when there are global level disruptions to supply chains. Sometimes they’re just natural disasters. Sometimes they’re geopolitics. Sometimes they’re something else. Containers ships stuck in canals, like those things happen. And we just need to be able to know, be disciplined about our supply chains, the use of technology, and think of that solution more globally in terms of how we develop our factories and utilize our data and systems.

Labor challenges

Jeff Dance: Thank you. Suzy, about you? What other problems do you see that are kind of accelerating the need for change?

Suzy Teele: Well, there’s several that we’ve seen. One is just the aging of the manufacturing workforce. The average age is mid fifties, mid to late fifties. And so, you know, there’s challenges in terms of those folks desiring to retire or the need for them to develop skills that are very different from the skills that they may have developed when they started their careers. So that’s certainly one big challenge that we see there is just the aging of the workforce.

The second is attracting people into the industry. The industry has a perception. Jeff and I talked about this when we were at the South by Southwest panel earlier this week. There’s a real perception around what manufacturing jobs are that you’re driven by generations previous to us, right? The dull, dirty, dangerous, right? You’re in a dark room. You have to be a strong person to be able to lift things and use equipment. Certainly does exist in some factories today, but more and more, the focus is more on the knowledge worker, right? And the skills worker, someone who can use computers, someone who feels comfortable with robots or CNC machines or, you know, 3D printers or whatever may be in that environment.

And so not only do we have an aging workforce, we have a real issue with attracting young people or other people into the industry. And then we have a skills match challenge, which I touched on, which is the skills that employees are looking for don’t necessarily match the skills that people have today.

In fact, the ARM Institute has a free resource, and we’ll talk a little bit more about what we do, called roboticscareer.org. And in it, we help people understand what careers are available in manufacturing using robotics and what skills employers desire and what skills people have. And we have a skills match capability that allows employers to find people or for people to find jobs or find training. And what we find is in our statistics that there is a skills mismatch in terms of what employers are looking for.

And so I say so many of the issues related and challenges are related to the labor. Right now there’s 800,000 about 800,000 open jobs in US manufacturing and they’re projecting that number to grow to about 2.4 million by 2030.

Jeff Dance: So even though we’re implementing a lot of this advanced automation, AI, etc. we’re expecting to create a lot more jobs.

Suzy Teele: Yes, yeah, I think, and that’s the other issue is that people are afraid of automation or getting into manufacturing because they think they want to lose their jobs. There have been no statistics at all that have shown that people have lost their jobs.

First of all, there’s a labor shortage overall, so every employee is incredibly valued.

Secondly, there are opportunities to train those employees or, you know, thousands, close to 17,000 training programs we found across the United States that prepare people for careers in manufacturing using robotics, everything from micro-credentials to PhDs.

We’ve seen manufacturing firms hire people right out of high school, or if they’re in a pre-apprenticeship program in high school, hiring them right in to do the work that needs to be done. So I would say that there is a lot of opportunity in manufacturing and the jobs are gonna change, but they’re not gonna go away.

Jeff Dance: Thank you. Jeff, what about you? What problems are you seeing in the industry that are accelerating some change?

“Dark data” and changing consumer needs

Jeff Winter: I agree with the ones that were said, so I will just add to them rather than duplicate them. One is capturing and harnessing the amount of data that is being generated. Currently, according to a statistic, we’re anticipating to generate 182 zettabytes worth of data this year, one zettabyte is a trillion terabytes. Those numbers are incomprehensible to understand what to do with it. And if you look at, according to McKinsey Global Institute, manufacturing consumes nearly double the amount of data as the next highest industry.

You look at Splunk, according to them, 55% of enterprise data is dark data, which means it’s a mystery. It’s unknown or unused by anyone in the company. So there is a tremendous amount of data that companies don’t know what to do with, don’t know how to take advantage of, don’t even know what they have. And so that is going to be a big one to figure out how do we take advantage of all this data that we already are generating, let alone future data that we may want to generate or collect. So that’s a big one.

The second one is a challenge is this is gonna be driven from the consumer side. Consumers want different things now than they did 30 years ago. Mass personalization and customization is what everyone wants. That changes how manufacturers have to manufacture in order to make custom things for everyone at a mass scale. And so that shifts more to flexible, modular, and agile working environments and even system configurations to be able to support who knows what future things are going to be wanted to be customized.

Factories of the Future SXSW panel

Jeff Dance: Thank you. Those are great insights. You know, Suzy, you mentioned you guys are recently at South by Southwest speaking together. I understood it was a panel on smart, sustainable, streamlined factories of the future. So very similar topic to what we’re talking about.

I’m curious for both of you, any high-level takeaways, insights that this is kind of a tough question because I’m sure you guys are speaking for probably an hour, but any high-level takeaways or insights from that panel discussion that you can share?

Jeff Winter: I mean, the biggest thing I’m going to say is this topic was an important hot topic. We had, I think an hour budget, we had 45 minutes. And so we built in Q and A.

We had so many people asking questions that we not only exceeded our 15 minutes, we went into the next one and they had to kick us off stage because there were so many questions that were being answered. And so the panel had to, the panels had to go and leave and we all decided to answer every question that was asked. But to me, that I’ve done hundreds of panels. I’ve never had that occur before. So I guess that was exciting to go the line that formed of questions that people had on this topic.

Pent-up demand

Marco Micheletti: I’ll add that there’s pent-up demand. I see this in the ground truth, speaking to the small and medium folks that those manufacturers out there, they are hungry for technology to help them. They’re looking for solutions and they’re waiting for folks like the ARM Institute or the MEP organizations or a lot of these other and even the just a robust ecosystem of third-party partners with technology solutions.

They’re waiting for them to bring it to them and understand how they can utilize them as well. We see the demand and there’s a lot of people that are, when can I have some? When can I have some technology? Whether it’s robots, industry 4.0, they just want it all and they just need help through some of these organizations and partnerships to help sort it all out for them, make good decisions and help them on.

Suzy Teele: When can I have some information? Whether it’s robots, industry, port, they just want it all. Yeah, and you’re absolutely right, Marco, and we saw that in the audience at South by Southwest. And I have to say, I agree with everything that Jeff said. It was very gratifying to know that people cared and they paid attention.

But I guess for me, a personal highlight as a young woman came up was one of the audience members who want to ask questions. And she said, based on your feedback, I’m going to look into a career in manufacturing. And I’m like, yes, my job is done, right? And I mean, those are the wins that we look for because we want bright young people to see that manufacturing, and I know Marco deals with this every day, manufacturing is a technology job, right? It’s a cool technology job. You get to work with computers, you get to work with advanced automation technology. And we have a generation of people who grew up with smartphones and laptops and social media, and this is the environment that they can go in.

And one of our biggest challenges is helping people understand, young people in particular, that that is what the environment is in many cases.

Success factors

Jeff Dance: One of the things that I think that makes us unique as service companies, we do digital work and we do physical work. And that digital physical combination is really special when you can work on the digital side, but then you can see the physical manifestation, hardware and software. And I would say the same thing. It’s like, hey, bring all that digital know-how that you have. But working in a physical environment and be able to translate that into a physical environment and see how things speed up or change or how you can improve things. It’s an exciting space to be. And it’s an exciting space when we combine all these different technologies.

We know it’s more than technologies though that will make and shape the future success. I’m curious on, as you guys are all advisors and kind of experts in the industry, what are some of the success factors that you guys share with these different companies, these different industries, as they’re wanting to be successful, knowing that it’s kind of complicated, there’s a lot of things at play, there’s a lot of decisions that people could make.

Any frameworks or thoughts you guys shared for how companies can have success when they’re adopting more automation and thinking about the factory of the future? Suzy, start with you.

Suzy Teele: Sure. I mean, the absolute number one, top of the list is employee involvement in any decisions. There’s just a false narrative going around that automation will take away jobs. So that has to be dispelled upfront. And the only way that happens is if the employees are involved right upfront with the evaluation process, with understanding the goals. And we’ve seen time and time again, and I’m sure Jeff and Marco can share the same stories, that when employees are involved and the automation is brought in, that they’re happier in their job. Because some of the more dull or dangerous aspects of their job have been eliminated, right? Or greatly reduced, and they get to use their brain more than their brawn.

It’s not a hundred percent brain and zero percent brawn in every case, but they get to do that. And they overall find the job more satisfying. They develop more skills. They develop more interest in the job that they’re doing. We see that time and time again, but you know, that narrative out there that you should be afraid of automation, which has quite frankly has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, right? Has never proven to be true. People always find jobs, jobs change, and then oftentimes they’re more fulfilling jobs.

Jeff Dance: That makes sense. Jeff, what about you? Any thoughts on principles for being successful in the space or things that have led to success for implementing new technology, new changes in the companies you’ve worked with?

Jeff Winter: Well, the biggest thing that I see out there and part of what I speak about a lot on LinkedIn and in my articles and speeches is the fact that we’re in this era of Industry 4.0 and concepts like Industry 4.0, digital transformation, smart manufacturing, paint a pretty picture that everyone likes.

But when you go one step below, very few people agree on what the answer is or definition for those. And so I end up spending a lot of time making sure that each company I talk with has a clear, concise definition of what it means for their organization and that everyone that at least has authority to impact that vision can articulate it. You should have a one or two sentence answer for what it means for your particular company. So that’s the first one is having a clear definition.

The second is the right level for your company. So this is where I like to break it out in the art of the possible and the art of the practical. Everyone should have the same vision of the art of the possible. And I find that a lot don’t, meaning what can you do with today’s technologies? What will you be able to do tomorrow with tomorrow’s technologies? You need to start up here to make sure that you understand what’s possible before you then bring it down to the art of the practical based on your business needs, your current state, your challenges, your budget, and anything that’s unique to you.

And what I find is a lot of people’s actual vision strategy is lower than it should be because their art of the possible is only up here. When I have to inspire them and go, no, no, no, no, it’s way up here before you start to even pull it down. So they’re already limiting themselves before they ever get started.

Marco Micheletti: Yeah, I would add to that and just say, you know, these concepts are tools and we need to figure out how to help people bring the right tool to solve the right problem. But what I’ve seen as a similar success factor is also, you have to go through this change management process, bring the people along. That’s 100% true. I often see it though really being led by the mindset of the management. Like everyone, we’ve been in the thousands of factories and you look around and you just see a certain process and you’re going to that factory, why is this this way?

And there’s two kinds of responses. There’s like, “this isn’t ideal, we’re changing it, we have a process, gonna be, we have a vision for whether it’s how we move material to where the company’s going.” There’s this great leadership vision of we’re going to innovate no matter what it takes to do what we do better tomorrow than what we’re doing today. And sometimes, you see that and you’re like, I can see that everywhere I look in the factory now. Then sometimes there’s folks that either are constrained or just don’t have that same vision. I say that maybe sometimes it’s hard to measure, but it’s something that I’ve seen repeated around the world, North America, Central America, Asia, Europe. That’s a very common trait in any type of manufacturing environment.

Jeff Dance: Yeah, thank you. You know, companies are making such big complex decisions when they do decisions like this. So you can start small, but it’s often they’re making things that like, this is a five-year or 10-year decision. I’m spending a lot of money. And so I think it’s so critical to kind of go slow, to go fast and have a circle, have institutes, the CESMII, the ARM, and like be able to draw on this best practice, be able to draw on experts.

So you try to get those decisions right. And as you mentioned, Jeff, think about the the possible, right? Because I think with some new technology and the new process, you can leapfrog, you know, can leapfrog into better ways. And we’ve seen this in technology and in other domains and industries as well. And that transitions us a little bit into the future.

As we think about, you know, what does the future look like? I’m interested, you know, as we forecast a little bit, you know, let’s go ahead another 10 years. You know, what do factories look like? How are things shifting or changing?

The future of factories

Jeff Winter: So this is a good question. I’ll kind of answer it in two ways. I’ll say factories of 2030, at least the good ones, and then we’ll do factories of like 2050. So just much further out.

I’d say good factories in 2030. Once again, like the best ones, they’re gonna be highly connected across departments, but also across the entire value chain. Data is going to be easily accessible and contextualized in a way that can be used by all the stakeholders in the organization. And in a lot of places, these factories will be leveraging AI-driven insights and automation, taking advantage of everything from IoT sensors and digital twins to help optimize operations in real-time.

In addition, you’re going to see human workers will start to collaborate more closely with robots and cobots, allowing them to focus on high-value tasks while the automation handles the routine and repetitive work.

You’re to see things like predictive maintenance and energy efficiency and supply chain resilience will be kind of key priorities with even using a lot more cloud-based software playing a huge role in AI-driven analytics, guiding decision-making. And you’re also going to start to see sustainability will be more embedded into operations. And that’s going to change the way that things are made and the way that we manage it.

But once again, this is going to be like the best companies because this is only about five years away. The masses will not be there. But many of the good companies will start to be there, both big and small. But I’m going to say the best companies out there.

Now by 2050, most factories are gonna start to follow suit there. And so they’re all gonna start to look like that. Know, factories will be more productive than ever. So despite what some people may think, you’re actually gonna need just as many, if not more, workers and employees. It’s just the roles are gonna massively be different than they are today. So you’re gonna have pretty much the elimination of most, if not all routine or repetitive tasks by this time. Not just physical, but administrative. Awesome. AI is going to be integrated into everything we do. Rarely will a human make a decision without AI’s help.

And our interfacing with each other, our company, and the world will completely change. You’re talking about having augmented reality interfaces and even bio-integrated wearables that are going to completely enhance and change the way that we engage with machines and the way that we engage with other people.

And you’re also going to see productivity is going to skyrocket as flexible self-optimizing production lines can rapidly adapt to changing demands and enabling this mass customization at a scale that we’ve never seen before. So workers are no longer even going to be tied to a single potentially monotonous task, but instead oversee intelligent systems and be adaptable to various needs that they have as the company will start changing a lot more on the fly to meet the needs of the customers.

And so you’re going to see an entirely different way of working. I bet you thought the factory of 2050 won’t look that much different than one of the best factories that we have today. But the way that every human works in that factory from the shop floor worker, to the CEO will be night and day different.

Jeff Dance: Thanks for painting that vision. Suzie, what else would you add?

Suzy Teele: I love that vision. I don’t know what percent of U.S. manufacturers will be there in 2030 or 2050. Certainly, that’s the mission of the manufacturing USA institutes of which the ARM Institute and CESMII are part of is to try to help them move along as quickly as we can to that vision. So we are a hundred percent behind that as all 18 manufacturing USA institutes.

But some of the factors that are gonna make that more challenging are, again, just the aging of the workforce, the aging of the owners of the manufacturing firms. What we find now is not only the workforce is aging, but the owners are aging also, right? And so what are they going to do? Do they pass it down? Is it going to become an ESOP right employee-owned? Are they going to sell to a larger corporation?

I think we’re going to see a lot of transition over the next 20 years as to where these smaller manufacturers may end up, right? And so they may get someone who’s younger, maybe a son or daughter who comes in and grew up with computers. And so they feel much more comfortable with robotics or they may get bought out by an equity partner who is just trying to maximize profit as much as possible.

So I think that all those things Jeff describes are everything that should be happening, but we do have this challenge of just, you know, there aren’t a lot of factories that are run by young people today, right? And so I think that’s something that we all want to keep an eye on, is sort of how that all transitions.

But, you know, we have always envisioned in the eight years that we’ve been the Arm Institute, an environment that Jeff described where you’ve got people and robots working in line together. Most factories today are the ones that are really using robots or use industrial robots when you think of the car manufacturers, right? And they’ve got these big caged robotics arms that nobody can go near, right?

And certainly a lot of the work that we’re doing and the work that Marco’s looking at is really looking at the collaborative robot or the robot, you know, the cobot side where you have a six-step manufacturing process, three of it may be human, three of it may be robot, and how do you make that all work across the lines so that it’s as most efficient as possible?

And certainly what Jeff mentioned with AI and everything else and IoT will make that all successful. But that’s sort of what we’re shooting for is that sort of seamless integration of automation in humans. And so that they can take advantage of the data and they can take advantage of the tools and the equipment, but they still, you know, they’re still running the show. Humans are still running the show.

Jeff Dance: Thank you.

Marco Micheletti: I painted a several picture to what Jeff said when I was thinking about this. And I would just say his 2030 vision, I’ve been in two facilities today, you know, in 2025 that are doing that. They’re the leaders out there in that market space and it’s coming and it’ll be, you know, it’ll be 10 more next year and 20 more the following year. It’s coming. So it’s definitely happening.

I’ve seen the data infrastructure be built so that it’s not that just from a safety standpoint, the humans aren’t aware of where the robots are. The robots are aware of where the humans are and they’re pausing their paths when the people get close. That’s happening today.

So humans and robots, AMRs, AGVs, cobots are all working together right now and it’s gonna take a while for that to be spread. Thinking of the vision of 2050. And if we think of, you know, the lights out or very few people on the floor, I’d say that that’s kind of the 80-20 of maybe 20% of the people are going to be focused on the factory floor. The 80% you’re not going to see, you don’t see on that poster when you’re showing the poster of what manufacturing 2050 looks like, you’re leaving out all the people that are innovating the products that are building the automation that are building the factories that can be flexible and integrated, that are making the software, the trades that are coming in and building it, because manufacturing at the end of the day is a physical process, and we’re not going to automate out all of those jobs.

And if we think about data centers as the factories of the future, to run the AI that’s going to help the factory, those are still going to be innovative types of factories that all require physical sciences in the STEM fields.

Suzy Teele: The AI that’s gonna help the factory floor, those are still gonna be innovative types of factories that all require physical sciences and standard fields, trades and people to support it. Even if we do support tasks, AI augmentation of a service call, that job is still gonna exist. Might be AI augmented. The person might be sitting a thousand miles away from the factory floor.

Marco Micheletti: You know, thinking of the vision of 2050. And if we think of, you know, the lights out or very few people on the floor, I’d say that that’s kind of the 80 20 of maybe 20 % of the people are going to be focused on the factory floor. The 80 %, you’re not going to see, you don’t see on that poster when you’re showing the poster of what manufacturing 2050 looks like, you’re leaving out all the people that are innovating the products that are building the automation that are building the factories that can be flexible and integrated, that are making the software, the trades that are coming in and building it, because manufacturing at the end of the day is a physical process, and we’re not going to automate out all of those jobs.

And if we think about data centers as the factories of the future, to run the AI that’s going to help the factory, those are still going to be innovative types of factories that all require physical sciences in the STEM fields.

Computer vision and AI

Jeff Dance: That seems like the principle of we’re gonna need more people to not only implement but also maintain and that maybe speed and flexibility increase but that we’re gonna need talent and we’re gonna need to re-scale talent to kind of support this infrastructure of the future.

One of the things we’ve seen dramatically change in the last two years, which isn’t really spoken about as much but you guys would understand, is how fast robotics has been accelerating as a result of GenAI and computer vision advancements.

And I’m curious, just as we think about computer vision, we know it plays a role in manufacturing today, but given that we can take something and, you know, cameras can fully understand what’s around them at zero shot without training, and that those libraries are being built. We’re like the beginning of just a massive treasure trove of libraries that support this understanding with cameras.

I’m curious how you guys see that accelerating things, if you guys have any thoughts on that.

Marco, you have had some experience in space, but love to start with you and then hear from others.

Marco Micheletti: I mean, think Jeff said it already with the zettabytes and exabytes of data, AI thrives and requires and is fueled by data. And whether it’s vision, I mean, there’s so many modes. We haven’t built models around yet and done the sensor fusion. That’s only going to just help accelerate. There’s just so much out there yet that’s untapped. And to be able to harness all of that, we’re going to need a tool, like AI to unlock it for us. So that’s just something out there for the future that. Yeah, that I, know, that just, we’re just scratching the surface right now, really.

Jeff Dance: Yeah. Jeff, any thoughts from you on computer vision? You know, there’s many technologies going into Industry 4.0, but it just seems like things have changed so much in the last couple of years. Any thoughts on how that’s going to play a role in accelerating things in the future?

Jeff Winter: So these are very interesting because vision robotics and AI or generative AI specifically are very different. And are there areas that they can take advantage of each other and overlap? Yes, specifically AI, but generative AI is kind of different from the other two. So if you look at it, yes, the computer vision has been popular for decades. It is becoming more powerful now through machine learning specifically that’s able to better help with classification of object detection, which is the biggest thing that you’re using vision for is can I make sense and identify what I see on the screen and then categorize it appropriately, whether it’s anomaly detection, whether it’s people recognition, facial recognition, whatever it is, classification and categorization are the two biggest things there. And yes, it’s now becoming easier and easier and easier with less and less programming to be able to do it. You’re always gonna need some of it, but it is becoming easier, especially in areas where you have inconsistent output.

A good example is if you were to make an iPhone, every iPhone looks identical. If you were to make a Cheeto, every Cheeto looks different. So it’s a lot harder to identify what’s a good Cheeto versus what’s a bad Cheeto. And that is a perfect example where AI is absolutely accelerating versus the iPhone. You don’t really need AI. It just may speed up the time because once you set the rule, it should never change until you make a new phone. So that’s going to be different than generative AI, which is really impacting the way that you interface with the world because you can now ask AI to help generate an answer, a thing, a drawing, a song, whatever it is you’re generating something for you.

And then the robotics aspects are purely replacing manual actions. So there are areas that all these can potentially overlap, but I view as they’re solving three different problems and it’s just the best companies are gonna figure out how to take advantage of these technologies to figure out how to use them as best as possible collectively.

Jeff Dance: Overlapping intertwined. 

Suzy Teele: And I just if I can add this is something we do a lot of work in the manufacturing USA institutes the way that they operate as we have consortiums as you mentioned at the beginning, Jeff, we’ve got about 450 organizations that are part of our consortium which are the largest manufacturers in the world that you know the most most relevant research institutes that are focused in robotics and manufacturing all the technology companies that are creating new capabilities with robots and AI enabled robotics.

In the eight years that we’ve been around, we’ve done over 100 technology projects. We get funding at the federal, state and local areas to do projects to solve the problems of why manufacturers aren’t adopting, specifically robotics technology faster, right? And so I would have to say of those 100 products, projects, probably 80 % of them involve some type of vision system. We do a lot of work and we bring things to prototype stage. So we do a lot of work in the inspection for quality control, know, looking for defects because that’s hard on the human eye to look for defects, right? For hours on end. We did a really cool project with the Department of Defense where we had a drone do an inspection of a Navy ship. Because it used to be that people climbed all over the top of them and tried to find defects. And so here’s a drone that can do that, right? We did that a few years ago.

And then I would say about now half of the projects that we’ve done so far have involved some level of AI. So again, back to Jeff’s point and Marco’s point, collecting that data, right? To be able to identify common problems. And in fact, we have initiated and we announced about a year ago an initiative called the AI Data Foundry. We’re actually trying to accomplish that mission of trying to define those common data sets and, and, and, routines that we might be able to normalize and potentially share across the multiple manufacturers. Because the data I can, whenever I talk about AI and I’m not claiming to be the world’s expert, but I always say data, data, data, right? Like the software is the software. There’s all kinds of software out there, right? But if you don’t have the data for the software to be able to make the decisions that you’re asking it to make, you’re not going to get far. And there are so few small medium-sized manufacturers that have any data that’s relevant at this point in time. 

Jeff Dance: Which is such a critical place where the ARM Institute, CESMII, and others can lead out, where you have specialized data sets, right, or specialized LLMs as we think about the future, or specialized clouds as we think about infrastructure partner with others.

But yeah, I’ve always been a big advocate of, hey, we have a lot of big data, where’s the little data that I want to act on? You know, just give me a little bit of data that’s good and clean. But I think that’s part of the challenge.

Suzy Teele: Yes, exactly.

Jeff Dance: Well, I know we’re kind of running over here, but I want to ask a final question. Before that, I do want to recap. One of the interesting things we’ve seen with computer vision is we go into old factors, and we’ve visited many recently, that want to change. And we’re kind of blown away by just putting up a few cameras, how we can make a factory a lot smarter with little training. Because you can make machines smart, per se, but you can get data off of those cameras by analyzing a lot that’s on the floor. And so you could swap out an entire set of an entire line with new equipment, but you can also learn a lot from an improvement perspective just by putting a single camera above that equipment. And that’s been interesting to see how you can pull data off of something so small. And I think that’s a teaser for how we step into some of these advancements.

So to round out, as we think about closing our amazing conversation here, Jeff, I would ask you, what advancements to manufacturing are you really excited about as we think about the future? And I want to ask a different question of the others, but start with you, Jeff.

Enhanced decison-making

Jeff Winter: I’m most excited about how artificial intelligence will impact and enhance human decision-making in manufacturing. Because one thing that makes manufacturing a little different than other industries in the decision-making process is the ability to control outcomes. You can have it help make a decision and then immediately act on that decision to make an impact in physical processes. And so seeing everything from AI-driven MES to ERP to PLM, every acronym out there from a software category that you have that actually helps the development of a product to the manufacturing of the product, to the shipment of a product, seeing how AI will infiltrate that to help the decision-making processes that humans have.

So we’re no longer using gut feeling guesswork. Everything is data driven. And that’s going to be one of the most exciting things for me and just for manufacturing. And for me personally is how much I’m going to be using AI to help my decision-making and how much manufacturers will be using AI to help their decision-making.

Jeff Dance: Why would you not leverage a world superintelligence for any problem that you have? Why would you not create your own Jeff Winter agent that you could chat with and solve some problems with? We’re seeing that already, but that’s amazing.

Advice for future manufacturing professionals

Suzy, one of the questions I wanted to ask you to round out is for those that want to be interested in this space, what would you say to them as far as, you know, steps to get more interested in factories and manufacturing, what advice would you give to them? You know, had that person at SXSW who said, hey, I’m interested in maybe pursuing this path. What would you tell them?

Suzy Teele: Certainly there are a lot of resources for manufacturers of all sizes to learn more beyond what companies like Marco’s company provides, which is very valuable. And Jeff, we’ve got these government-funded resources because the government does care about manufacturing and thinks it’s critical. Right. And so you can look at the 18 manufacturing USA institutes of which I’m one of and Jeff is Jeff works with.

You can look at the Manufacturing Extension Partnership or MEP network, which are regionally oriented manufacturing business consultants that can help people.

You can look to universities who do a lot of work in developing new technologies and are looking to find manufacturers to test those technologies out. So there’s really a lot of opportunities for anyone. Who was interested in automating their manufacturing environment. If they’re interested in automating in careers in manufacturing, as I mentioned, we’ve got roboticscrid.org. Anybody could come to the manufacturingusa.com website and we’ve got a whole program called Modern Makers where we feature all kinds of different jobs in manufacturing.

And so there’s just, you know, the thing about, I was early, I’m old enough to say I was kind of in generation one of the whole software industry, right? You know, I was up there with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as we bring everything out. And I sort of feel like we’re sort of in generation one of really, I know for Jeff, it’s 4.0, but to me, it’s really, really using technology, right? And really taking advantage of technology and manufacturing. And there’s so much that’s happening that is going to create so many career opportunities for people in manufacturing that I really would love for them to take further advantage of all the resources that exist and understand that this can be a viable career that generally pays more than other industries, generally has better health benefits, and generally you keep those jobs for longer, right? And those are things that don’t really count.

You don’t necessarily, well, in a lot of cases, you don’t need an expensive four-year degree to do the job. And so I think there’s a lot of opportunities for people to really find manufacturing, a manufacturing career to be very enjoyable. And just like, you know, our fathers and grandfathers felt back in the forties and the fifties, I think that feeling’s coming back. It’s just a different type of job. But I think that the pride of being involved with building something is really important to people today and that a manufacturing career lets you do that.

Jeff Dance: Thank you. Marco, last question for you. For companies that are feeling left behind, what would you tell them?

Marco Micheletti: I would reach out, like Suzy said, there are national, state, and regional level government resources that we’re working with our local MEP branch partner, Impact Washington in the state of Washington. We’re partnered with them as a resource provider to just talk to, create roundtables, have a conversation. Reach out to the people that you know in the industry. I work in all the things that Suzie just said.

I am on the external advisory board with University of Washington Mechanical Department, and we look for opportunities to bridge industry and academia to do innovation.

I work with a couple local manufacturing organizations regionally to just have these conversations, speak at their innovation forums. Help people come up with ideas when they say, I’m inundated with all the options, help me sort through some of these things and how do we formulate, talk to it?

So Jeff was talking about a lot of the frameworks and we need people like Jeff and these national organizations that have these frameworks established to help us define what we’re trying to do, give us language and just educate. And they don’t need to really spend any money to do to have these conversations. There’s this huge resource out there. Of people that that’s their job to perform this education and then take these formal steps forward. We’ve been able to do partner, you know, actual funded partnerships through these organizations for some of our clients. And so it is about trying to, you know, narrow in on what’s the right tool and the solution that we’re going to try to solve and have these, you know, learning and education, figure out how we’re going to bring these to the small meeting. But it just starts with talking and reaching out and understanding that there’s a large willing participating of partners willing to participate, that it’s their job to help. And I think just that education on the process and what’s out there is eye-opening because some folks may not realize what’s out there and it’s there for them.

Jeff Dance: Grateful to have you guys on the show. It’s my pleasure to have you here and to hear all of your insights and your wisdom as experts and people that are passionate about this space. So thank you for your leadership and your example and your service. And that’s a wrap.