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Podcast: Insights from our team of editors on how 2024 transformed manufacturing (Part 2)

Jan. 14, 2025
In this companion episode to Part 1 of Great Question, our editors share more of their insights on the events, technologies, and trends that shaped manufacturing in the year just concluded.

2024 was a year of remarkable growth and innovation for manufacturing, with key trends making lasting impressions on industry. Automation, AI, and advanced robotics have all gained traction heading into 2025, while sustainability initiatives have become a central focus for many plant operators.

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Additionally, global supply chain challenges and innovations in smart manufacturing have pushed companies to adapt and rethink their strategies.

In Part 2 of a wrap-up to the year just concluded, our Manufacturing Group editors—Scott Achelpohl and Robert Schoenberger of Smart Industry, Thomas Wilk, Laura Davis, Robert Brooks, and Dave Blanchard—look back at the most important trends that impacted manufacturing in 2024 and offer insights into directions that industry is heading.

Here's Part 1 of our roundtable conversation.

I'll pivot to the next part of our conversation, which is what are we looking forward to in 2025? I think the largest thing that I'm seeing or I'll keep be keeping an eye on is the extent to which AI can help maintenance teams automate onerous manual processes, like Root Cause Analysis, and like Failure Modes and Effects Analysis.

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To do an RCA exercise on a single asset can be a very onerous task that takes an awful lot of team resources. I'm now seeing software modules that can help automate that process, pulling in ChatGPT for example, to digest unstructured data like machine manuals and old maintenance reports, to help maintenance teams get a handle on these very onerous work processes and maybe get them done quicker.

If you can only do 4 to 6 in a year, maybe you can do 12 to 14 in a year. Or if you can't do any of them, if you're not staffed up enough to do it, maybe AI can help you do a couple of those and get you in a more proactive maintenance mode. 

So again, for Plant Services, there's a lot to look forward to, but the integration of semantic AI to get some of that more onerous manual work and analysis work done is something I’ll be keeping an eye on. Robert Brooks, what's one thing that you're looking forward to in 2025?

Best of 2024: SI looks back at our favorite features

Robert Brooks: Well, I think the capital investment bubble is going to blow. I think there's pent up demand by manufacturers to invest in new equipment not necessarily new technology, but certainly new equipment. In the metal castings sector, also some new plant construction. It's overdue in that sector but they have been sitting on their need, their desire to invest all through the current year because they don't want to be the first one to jump in the pool, or are waiting for some development to happen. 

In September, at the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS), new orders for equipment were more than double the average of the previous and the subsequent month. There was no outlying factor driving that, and I attributed it to the desire to spend, the desire to have new equipment in the house.

It’s like people buying a new TV because they think they deserve it, or they're getting a new car because their lease ran up. It's just a desire to do that sort of a thing and I think they've been holding back, waiting for consumer demand to tell them to do this. I think at some point in 2025, consumer demand will tell them to do it and they will do it. That's what I'm looking for.

TW: Robert S., is that something you'll aso be keeping your eye on?

Robert Schoenberger: Yeah, certainly, I think Robert Brooks did it really nicely here. The consumer has been telling manufacturers for quite a while now that they'll buy what's available. The American consumer has kept our economy afloat very nicely over the past two years. As much as people complain about grocery store prices, they spend; they go out and buy new clothes and they go out and buy other new things.

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There are some bottlenecks in the economy. Probably the biggest one is the housing market, which has been depressed for so long and once that kicks back into gear again, that leads this great virtuous cycle as more housing is being built, that requires more pickups for the contractors to move things around, which leads to auto sales, which leads to furniture sales, which leads to appliance sales as people move into those new houses and want a new dishwasher and a new washing machine, all these things. 

That market's been depressed for so long, regardless of who won the election, Harris and Trump both had a lot of policies in place that they plan to enact in the new year to spur more housing construction because we know that's a challenge throughout the U.S. economy.

Housing affordability has gotten very poor for young people, and anything that will move the needle on that will spark so much economic activity in the ancillary markets around it, so I'm really looking forward to seeing that.

The question has been for so long, as inflation went up and as rates went up, could we achieve this soft landing. It's pretty clear that we did not drive the economy into a ditch with the rapid increase in interest rates. They did their job, which was painful. It slowed economic activity, it discouraged investment in big new capital equipment, all the things that were talking about being down. But they did their job also in reining in inflation for the most.

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So, if we can clear some of these big bottlenecks in housing and energy and to some degree in food costs (although we're not going to get any help in the poultry market when you've got this avian flu going around, there's always going to be something in the economy that will throw a wrench into things), the underlying conditions for a very strong economy for the next several years are in place. They had been kind of falling into place for the past 18 months or so, and it really looks like there's a great ramp for a strong year if we can get past a few hurdles.

TW: Scott, what's something that you're going to keep your eye on for 2025?

Scott Achelpohl: I don't mean to belabor AI, but … AI! One interesting thing I want to see is, and I'm less of a veteran in the manufacturing industry than you all are, but AI seems to have spurred what I would kind of call a cottage industry in software developers and vendors developing ways for manufacturers to examine the health of their data.

We talked a lot this year about “oh, AI implementation is so critical, and it's so critical to have clean data,” and what I noticed, especially in our visits to conferences, the one we visited, Tom, and another couple I went to earlier in the year is there's so much emphasis on “there's only so much you can do with AI if you don't have the data to operate it cleanly” and I just think in 2025 there's going to be an emphasis on making sure that you have data health, if you're going to implement AI.

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TW: Yeah, the conference that you and I were at was the IFS Unleashed conference, and I was struck by how all-in IDS is on AI and AI applications. They said they have a team of 2,000 people working on AI challenges every day, something like 200 different potential use cases and they’ve already implemented 60 of them, put them into production. So it’s astonishing, and that's just one company.

Laura, we'll pivot to you. What are some trends and stories you're going to keep your eye on for this coming year?

Laura Davis: I’m still going to keep my eye on robots, especially humanoid robots. This past year, we saw probably the most robots that have been released in a year, at least in my career, and being in manufacturing. I think that's going to continue to grow next year, especially for warehouse applications, I think those will be big.

A second prediction I have and it might not happen this next year, but I foresee AI being integrated with safety tech and wearables. There's already a lot of safety wearables on the market. Communication devices that track workers, they help handle emergency situations, some help workers avoid risky positions, so they don't injure themselves.

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And there’s not a ton, but there's enough out there, but I think they'll start integrating with AI and it'll improve risk, association, risk prevention, to protect workers even more than they do now, and not necessarily just wearables, but safety components and mechanisms that are on machinery. If AI is integrated into those, it'll be a way to track safety issues and incidents, and help prevent them in the first place. I think we'll start seeing that, I don't know how big it will be, but I think it'll be a thing that happens.

About the Author

Scott Achelpohl

I've come to Smart Industry after stints in business-to-business journalism covering U.S. trucking and transportation for FleetOwner, a sister website and magazine of SI’s at Endeavor Business Media, and branches of the U.S. military for Navy League of the United States. I'm a graduate of the University of Kansas and the William Allen White School of Journalism with many years of media experience inside and outside B2B journalism. I'm a wordsmith by nature, and I edit Smart Industry and report and write all kinds of news and interactive media on the digital transformation of manufacturing.