Sharing some of his thoughts on how he believes smart factory operations will evolve in 2025, Chris Iveson (pictured) — CEO and co-founder of Sheffield-based
FourJaw Manufacturing Analytics, which supports over 130 manufacturers globally by capturing production data and turning it into ‘actionable insight’ — said the manufacturing industry is often bombarded by tech companies and consultants pushing ‘pipedream technologies nowhere near ready for deployment in most factory settings’.
“Despite this, the smart factory movement keeps marching on, driven by practical, down-to-earth tools that manufacturers can deploy at scale to deliver rapid return on investment (ROI). When it comes to technologies that matter, we believe four areas will have an outsized impact in 2025.”
The first of these is that generative artificial intelligence (AI) will unlock new value for mainstream manufacturers, as all of them use data in some form today. Mr Iveson explained: “We see huge volumes of data collected from machines and IoT devices on the factory floor. New generative AI tools will make it easier for manufacturers to identify problems and improve processes by automatically recommending actions from their data. Generative AI could also make predictive maintenance standard practice and support a raft of process improvements that drive quality, productivity and sustainability.”
Intuitive technologiesHe continued: “The second point is that while manufacturing needs skilled people, the industry has a talent crisis that makes such skills not only harder to find but also more expensive. In 2025, many manufacturers will augment their people with a range of proven, practical, and intuitive technologies that make them more productive. They include: smart devices designed to improve communication between the top and shopfloors; artificial intelligence (AI) to spot problems and drive decisions on the shopfloor; automation; exoskeletons; and semi-autonomous cobots for material handling tasks.
“Meanwhile, the cloud will become the dominant form of computing in manufacturing. When we founded FourJaw in 2020, most manufacturers we spoke to used on-premise IT infrastructure in their factories, but there has since been a big shift towards cloud computing as a significant enabler of the smart factory movement. Indeed, the cloud has become the default setting for new manufacturing technologies; and while increasingly more manufacturers are using the cloud to host their data and applications than on-premise IT, we suspect most of their data remains in the factory as many manufacturers still rely on local hardware for older software. However, given the typical lifespan of servers, we believe 2025 could be the year cloud becomes the dominant form of manufacturing computing.”
He concluded: “I also believe that a wave of new legislation will drive even greater focus on sustainability in factory settings, with new rules such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which will be fully operational at the start of 2026. Manufacturers need to know precisely how much carbon is emitted producing every unit they sell, and we are seeing a concerted effort from them to understand the power drawn by each machine and the production process to ensure they can measure their carbon emissions accurately.”