John Dony, CEO and co-founder of What Works Institute, explains why policies, procedures and other accommodations for neurodivergent workers can make work safer for everyone.

Large language model (LLM) AIs have captured the world's attention with their ability to interpret plain-language and convert simple queries into machine language. But, the big advances in manufacturing design and execution are going to rely on updated hardware, says Deb Golden, chief innovation officer at Deloitte.

At Siemens recent Realize Live event in Detroit, Golden sat down with IndustryWeek Editor-in-Chief Robert Schoenberger to talk about where companies can leverage manufacturing technologies to gain an edge. And at just about every turn, the conversation returned to hardware.

AI is giving companies a better view of their operations?

“We’re in such a rush to make humans think better, faster, quicker. The only way we could do that is with compute time and space,” Golden said. “We have to know the health of the actual hardware that [manufacturing processes are] operating on. I don’t care where that [compute] hardware is, if it’s sitting on prem, if it’s sitting in the cloud, if it’s sitting literally in outer space on the satellite.”

Joe Kuhn, CMRP, former plant manager, engineer, and global reliability consultant, is now president of Lean Driven Reliability LLC. He is the author of the book “Zero to Hero: How to Jumpstart Your Reliability Journey Given Today’s Business Challenges” and the creator of the Joe Kuhn YouTube Channel, which offers content on starting your reliability journey and achieving financial independence. In our monthly podcast miniseries, Ask a Plant Manager, Joe considers a commonplace scenario facing the industry and offers his advice, as well as actions that you can take to get on track tomorrow. This episode explains why running time-based and condition-based maintenance in parallel is a costly mistake.

• Condition monitoring won't be perfect at first—expect a learning curve and commit for long-term gains.
• Avoid running time-based and condition-based maintenance systems together—it wastes resources.
• Pair condition monitoring with root cause analysis to drive real business impact.
• Protect condition monitoring resources from daily disruptions—require plant manager approval to reassign.