While we’ve been looking ahead to 2025 with our Crystal Ball series, we thought we’d take a break today, on the brink of the new year, and look back to the stories we felt were most important to our audience of IT and OT people, CIOs, CISOs, and other stakeholders of the kind in manufacturing.
AI’s march forward was important—and the technology is covered thoroughly in this list—but topics such as cybersecurity (which will play a huge role in our 2025 coverage) and IoT and data management and utilization also were critical to our audience in 2024.
So, here’s our list of the coverage we felt was most important this year. Not exactly a top 10, but these were our favorites:
The AI trap: Why manufacturers fail without the right data
Nick Haase of MaintainX wrote on Dec. 9: “No eight words strike more fear in a manufacturing leader’s heart than, ‘The board wants to see our AI strategy.’”
He also touched on a recurring theme from 2024—that without data in order and accessible, AI’s effectiveness to a manufacturer is greatly diminished.
And Haase detailed how, in his role as co-founder of an industrial maintenance startup, he’s spent hundreds of hours over the past year speaking with frontline manufacturing teams across the country. “This demand for an AI strategy is something I hear everywhere I go.”
Manufacturing leaders are feeling the pressure, he wrote. A recent study of 1,200 IT decision-makers found that two-thirds identified FOMO, or “fear of missing out,” which SI detailed in a report on an ABBYY study, as a significant factor in their company’s decision to adopt AI technologies.
Six ways to incorporate AI into your manufacturing operations
Roger Sands, co-founder and CEO of Wyebot, wrote on Dec. 4 that “AI is everywhere. In the manufacturing world, organizations are turning to this technology for everything from monitoring complex machinery and identifying and reporting performance issues to improving customer satisfaction and energy efficiency.” The problem isn’t finding AI, he added, “it’s knowing which AI solutions will best support your needs.”
Podcast: Tighter cybersecurity starts with better password practices
In 2024, we had a lot of fun with our multimedia offerings, particularly Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, which has turned out to be popular with our audience.
By October, it was Manufacturing Month—and also National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. To mark the occasion, Smart Industry recruited Joe Anderson of Ohio-based TechSolve for an episode of Great Question to talk about how robust cyber defenses can start with up-to-date password practices and policies. He’s also a contributor to our Crystal Ball series.
Anderson was a big “get” this year for Smart Industry—an IT and info security pro with over 25 years of industry experience, possessing several cybersecurity certifications. His company, among other IT services, helps small manufacturers (TechSolve is part of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership in Ohio) tackle cybersecurity compliance challenges and risk management.
Study: N. American manufacturers drive 27% surge in AI adoption since 2022
By Aug. 28, we were well into the “year of AI implementation,” but the technology, according to a report that month from Innova Solutions, actually has had a healthy last two years, with adoption surging 27% as a priority among North American manufacturers since 2022.
The study from the Atlanta-based technology services firm showed “AI adoption has surged from a priority for 59% of manufacturers to a driving force for 86%, with projections indicating near-universal adoption (93%) within the next two years.”
Smart Industry’s own State of Initiative Report for 2023 and the upcoming 2024 edition also show AI’s surge in popularity and adoption, the rise of the FOMO phenomenon, and the melting away of hesitation about the technology.
Partners in IoT that made perfect sense
Two seemingly unrelated companies found they shared a home city—Lexington, Kentucky—so it made sense for them to collaborate using IoT, Managing Editor Scott Achelpohl wrote on Nov. 21.
Turns out, IoT technology by printer pioneer Lexmark was just what Big Ass Fans needed at the core of its automated system CommandSense that, paired with its “comfort” products, can help keep warehouse floors to loading docks to maintenance bays worldwide warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
Lexington-based Big Ass Fans is perfectly named because its signature products, hundreds of thousands of them, are large overhead fans that keep the air moving in workplaces in 120 countries. In fact, it’s the largest manufacturer of HVLS (high volume, low speed) overhead fans.
Episode 2 of (R)Evolutionizing Manufacturing: Data is everything
Another program we very much enjoyed in 2024 was (R)Evolutionizing Manufacturing, a team-up between our managing editor and Industry 4.0 enthusiast and thought leader Jeff Winter. We hope to return in 2025 with more episodes, but Episode 2 in July went to an all-important topic: the quality of your data and how it can harm or help your manufacturing operation.
It’s all about data, or as Jeff said: “All the cool new technologies and transformational initiatives you hear about revolve around properly capturing and extracting value from data.”
Webinar: Tons of tips from three experts on ‘Being Digital’
Our audience also got a lot out of our webinars, and on Aug. 15, Smart Industry and sponsor ServiceNow hosted a program that was part of their Digital Transformation Academy. The chat among three distinguished experts turned to AI and equally so to the backbone of AI utilization in manufacturing and most digital transformations—data, its quality, and its accessibility in any manufacturing operation.
The program took inspiration from author and "digital optimist" Nicholas Negroponte and his 1995 bestseller, “Being Digital,” which turned out to quite accurately and interestingly forecast the advancement and reach of technology into every corner, including industry.
Our guests were Heath Stephens, digitalization leader at Hargrove Controls & Automation, a member of the Control System Integrators Association; Jamal Syed, president & CEO at HEXstream; and Craig Zehrung, director of laboratory instruction at Purdue University. Thanks again to them!
Cybersecurity report shows threats to OT skyrocketing
A release in June from networking and security provider Fortinet added to the evidence from other reports in 2024 that all showed the threat to manufacturing OT from cyberattacks is rising sharply.
According to the 2024 State of Operational Technology and Cybersecurity Report by Fortinet, 49% of respondents in 2023 experienced an intrusion that impacted either their OT systems only or both their IT and OT systems, but this year nearly three-fourths (73%) of these organizations have been impacted.
The survey data also shows a sizable year-over-year increase in intrusions that only affected OT systems (from 17% to 24%).
Manufacturing leads in cyberattacks for a third straight year, so what are some defenses?
Manufacturing facilities are an important part of the U.S. economy, and they produce some of our most iconic brands. But an increasing amount of cybercrime is introducing more risk to the industrial sector, according to new research that IBM's Michelle Alvarez wrote in May.
For the third year in a row, the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Report ranked manufacturing as the most-attacked industry by cybercriminals. The sector’s low tolerance for downtime has historically made it an attractive target for cybercriminals seeking to apply pressure for financial gains. Alvarez is on the Strategic Threat Analysis team at IBM that produced the report.
Inside the Rockwell, Church & Dwight OT cybersecurity team-up
Consumer goods manufacturer Church & Dwight Co. and industrial automation and digital transformation giant Rockwell Automation in March detailed their work to bolster C&D's network of operational technology and minimize the risk of intrusion.
Church & Dwight has locations across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. and controls 13 home and personal care brands with such diversity as famed baking soda maker Arm & Hammer, Oxiclean, Trojan, Waterpik, Nair, and Orajel, so its OT footprint is wide—and cybersecurity for those widespread manufacturing systems is top of mind.
Honorable mention: With AI, the time is now, say manufacturing technologists, futurist, 'evangelist'
Call them “technologists,” or “digital evangelists,” or even “industrial futurists.”
What they preached in March was application of AI in manufacturing has arrived and, according to one leader at a conference in New Orleans, 2024 is the “year of AI implementation”—otherwise he and others fear companies that make all manner of things risk falling behind.
Vala Afshar is “chief digital evangelist” for Salesforce, the customer relationship management (CRM) software provider that partners with Rootstock Software on a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite of tools, and his was a prominent voice at Rootstock’s Rooted-In conference for more than 2,000 industrial technology types in The Big Easy.
