AI machine vision has been “almost ready” for a long time, but factory teams do not get paid for hype. They get paid for fewer defects, less scrap, higher yield, and systems that actually survive real production. I sit down with Russell, co-founder of Overview AI, to talk about what…
Most manufacturing hiring advice is either vague or completely detached from how industrial automation jobs really work. So I brought on Bill Seaman, Director of People Operations at Philomatic, to get brutally practical about what attracts great engineers, technicians, and field service talent and what quietly drives them away. We…
A lot of people think you need a perfect plan to get into industrial automation. Mia Skurdic proves the opposite. She started college unsure of her direction, discovered programming for the first time in an intro engineering rotation, and later landed in the Ignition ecosystem almost by accident, then never…
Thank you to our amazing sponsor Inductive Automation (https://inductiveautomation.com/) ______________________________________________________________ Industrial automation doesn’t need more hype. It needs tools that solve real plant problems, survive real uptime demands, and still play nicely with modern IT. We sit down with Colby Clegg, CEO of Inductive Automation, to unpack how Ignition…
Your digital transformation plan is probably not failing because you picked the wrong protocol. It’s failing because IT and OT are solving different problems with different timelines, different risk tolerance, and zero shared language. We sit down with David Ariens and Willem van Lammeren from the ITOT Insider podcast to…
Edge computing sounds clean on a slide deck, but the factory floor is where the definition gets real fast. We talk with Zoie Rittling, an edge computing specialist at TEGUAR, about what “compute close to the data” actually means when you’re dealing with heat, dust, vibration, uptime pressure, and constant…
“We do it with AI” is easy to say. Making robots work through contact, uncertainty, and variation on a real factory floor is the hard part. We sit down with Whitney Dills from Thought Forge AI to unpack an approach to industrial robotics control that flips a common assumption: more…
Paper schematics feel “reliable” until they are the reason a shutdown drags on, a cabinet print is wrong, or a tech makes a split-second mistake under pressure. We sit down with Dylan from Lightstream, a Belgian family-owned industrial automation company, to get brutally practical about what it takes to move…
Your engineering degree taught you equations. Then your first job asks you to troubleshoot a VFD, commission a skid, and explain the problem to five different people without melting down. That jump is real, and it’s exactly what we dig into with Alice Ristoff and Cassie Gardner from eTech Group.…
Most people in industrial automation agree we have a skills gap, but we keep aiming the message at ourselves. We sat down with Amanda Beaton from Siemens to talk about the side of Automate that deserves a bigger spotlight: Education Day, student tours, and the educators building the next wave…
AI isn’t just a software story, it’s a power story, a controls story, and a “how do we actually build this stuff” story. After the EPC show in Houston, I sit down with Dennis Ganson from Schneider Electric to unpack what’s changing in industrial automation and energy, and how you…
ROI math can be brutally simple, and that’s exactly why it often fails in industrial automation. If your spreadsheet only asks “how many heads are we replacing,” you might get a clean payback number, but you also risk approving the wrong projects and rejecting the right ones. We’re joined by…
“Manufacturing is still the place where you can start out sweeping the floor and end up running the company” is a bold claim, so we brought on someone who has lived the full arc. I’m joined by Matt Kirkner from the Tech Ed Podcast to unpack how advanced manufacturing, industrial…
For decades, the expectation has been: 🎓 Go to school first. 💼 Find a job later. But what if work and education happened at the same time? In this clip from our latest Automation Ladies episode, Patrick McGrew explains how countries like Switzerland have built one of the world's strongest…
Most automation projects stall long before the first robot moves. Not because the technology isn’t ready, but because buying feels like a maze: vague budgets, endless “it depends” quotes, and months of back-and-forth just to learn what something costs. We sit down with Wes from FANUC to talk about a…
For decades, the expectation has been: 🎓 Go to school first. 💼 Find a job later. But what if work and education happened at the same time? In this clip from our latest Automation Ladies episode, Patrick McGrew explains how countries like Switzerland have built one of the world's strongest…
That's exactly what PJ McGrew discusses in this clip from our latest episode. One of the biggest challenges in manufacturing isn't a lack of opportunity, it's making sure students are learning the skills employers actually need. Instead of leaving that responsibility solely to educators, Conexus Indiana is helping build a…
In manufacturing, automation, and engineering, we often talk about finding talent. But developing talent is just as important. 🎧 In this clip from our latest Automation Ladies episode, Rylan Pyciak of Cleveland Automation Systems® shares why great engineers aren't built by avoiding mistakes, they're built by learning from them. ⚙️…
Most workforce development advice sounds good until you try to scale it. Today we get specific, practical, and a little disruptive with PJ McGrew, Senior Vice President of Talent Strategy and Programming at Conexus Indiana, on why the Swiss apprenticeship model works and what it takes to adapt it for…
Cloud-first AI sounds great until you remember what a factory actually is: proprietary recipes, fragile uptime, legacy controls that still run fine, and a small team expected to keep everything profitable. We sit down with Brian Thykin, Head of Revenue at Sorba AI, to talk about what industrial AI and…
In this clip from our latest Automation Ladies episode, Rylan Pyciak of Cleveland Automation Systems® shares a practical perspective on AI in manufacturing and industrial automation. ⚙️ AI can help troubleshoot problems faster ⚙️ AI can accelerate repetitive tasks ⚙️ AI can support engineers and technicians as they learn ⚙️…
Everyone’s talking about AI, humanoids, and the “factory of the future” but plenty of plants are still held together with undocumented panels, obsolete PLCs, and the same hard production constraints they’ve had for decades. Nikki sits down with Rylan Paishack from Cleveland Automation Systems to sort out what actually works…
Not because you can’t do it. But because it’s easier to say, “maybe later.” In our latest episode with Rachael Pasini from WTWH Media LLC, we got into something that hits for a lot of us: “I’m not bad at this… I just haven’t learned how to be good at…
