themerlanos

Every plant I walk into has the same two conversations happening at once. The first one is about hiring. Good people are hard to find, experienced operators are retiring, and the open positions on the board just stay open. The tribal knowledge walks out the door with the veteran who ran that line for twenty years - I wrote about that back in July, and it has only gotten louder since. The second conversation is about AI. Plant leaders see the demos, read the announcements, and want some of it. If we can't hire enough skilled people, maybe the machines can be smarter instead. Both conversations are legitimate. But there is a problem sitting underneath both of them that nobody wants to name: the data is a mess. Listen to this post: AI doesn't fix bad data. It amplifies it. Here's the uncomfortable truth about every AI tool being sold to manufacturing right now, including the newer AI features arriving inside Plex itself. Rockwell's integration of FactoryTalk ...