In our last article, we discussed how automation is about executing actions, while smart manufacturing is about making decisions, and how getting equipment data to flow is the first step toward a smarter factory.
Yet many factories, after connecting their equipment and installing dashboards, run into a puzzling situation: they have the data and the reports, but managers’ workloads haven’t shrunk. They still walk the production lines first thing in the morning, still hold afternoon meetings to go over the numbers, and when an anomaly occurs, they still rely on phone calls and LINE groups to pass the word along, layer by layer.
The data is connected, but decisions are not yet moving. This is precisely the “last mile” where many factories get stuck on the road to AI-driven smart manufacturing.