Modern manufacturing is moving away from pure automation and toward something far more interesting: a factory floor where artificial intelligence works alongside people. Instead of just speeding up machines, companies are using intelligent systems to sharpen human judgment on the line and in the boardroom. That’s where the next wave of productivity — and competitive advantage — is emerging.

These changes around modern manufacturing were a major focus of theCUBE’s coverage of the QAD Champions of Manufacturing event. For decades, many manufacturers have concentrated on robotics as a way to take people out of repetitive tasks on the factory floor. Now, the conversation is circling around how enterprises can augment workers’ skills and judgment rather than replace them outright, according to Scott Hebner, principal analyst at theCUBE Research. 

“We recently ran an Agentic AI Futures Index survey, and in manufacturing companies, 61% of them saw digital labor as inevitable — as a way to give their workers new superpowers,” Hebner said. “Not to replace them, but to give them new superpowers to do more.”

During the event, Hebner and Paul Gillin, enterprise editor at SiliconANGLE, provided commentary about AI-driven innovation and digital labor. TheCUBE’s coverage also featured interviews with QAD Inc. executives, customers and industry experts on how AI and cloud innovation are moving modern manufacturing to the next step of the assembly line. (* Disclosure below.)

Here’s three key insights you may have missed from theCUBE’s coverage:

Insight #1: AI is shifting modern manufacturing toward augmented workers.

There’s been much discussion about widespread job loss over the past number of months, with AI taking the brunt of the blame, but this assessment is far from universal. While some automation-focused roles may dip, growth in more strategic, knowledge-based positions is likely to outpace those declines, according to Hebner.

“If you’re going to take agents and replace people to save money, that could be a strategic mistake,” Hebner explained. “You really should be taking those savings — at least the majority of it — and reinvesting in the growth of the future, which are these knowledge-based jobs.”

When it comes to which jobs will be affected moving forward, conventional wisdom focuses on hourly line workers. But it’s noteworthy that many of those positions have already been automated or been outsourced to other countries, according to Gillin.

“A lot of the human capital that’s left to manufacturing now is in a more strategic role, and there is room for productivity improvements in all of the different stages of manufacturing from supply chain down to packaging and delivery; room for improvement in all those areas,” he said. “This is all about speed.”

Enterprises have to move quickly today, and lengthy (and costly) enterprise resourcing planning rollouts are no longer feasible, Hebner noted. The other priority is giving factory-floor workers the tools to make better decisions and judgments.

“To me, that’s creativity — it’s an innovation,” he said. “It’s sort of a quality statement when people can make better decisions.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete keynote analysis:

Insight #2: Frontline empowerment could transform factories.

Industry observers say the fastest path to modernizing factory operations now lies in expanding the authority of frontline workers. Facing labor shortages and supply chain pressures, manufacturers are turning to AI to boost workforce capacity as a response, according to Sanjay Brahmawar (pictured), chief executive officer of QAD. But more than just filling vacancies, QAD believes this is key in securing next-generation talent.

“The way we look at it is that [we] look at two things. One, the people that are in manufacturing today, we’ve gotta empower them and we’ve gotta make them more effective, because that is one way to address this capacity shortfall,” Brahmawar told theCUBE. “The second thing is we’ve gotta change the systems to become systems of action, because we want to attract the next generation talent and you’re not gonna attract … next generation talent with these green screens and old systems.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete interview with Sanjay Brahmawar:

That focus on human effectiveness is guiding how manufacturers think about transformation. In boardrooms, discussions have moved to the idea of empowering a “connected workforce,” where frontline operators use technology and real-time data to break down silos and unlock new levels of productivity, according to Ken Fisher, president of QAD Redzone.

“It’s not just about the technology or the software,” Fisher said. “If you’re going to implement a technology, it needs to change behavior — it needs to change something material on the shop floor in order for you to get the results.”

Powerhouses in the manufacturing sector, including The Hershey Company and Nestlé Purina PetCare, are taking these ideas in their stride. Centralizing training and learning tools becomes vital for a diverse workforce because it helps dissolve the departmental “neighborhoods” that create silos in large factories, according to Terry LeDoux, former vice president of Nestlé Purina North America.

“After you implement RedZone and you have this visibility to how the factory — not just my area [in it] — is performing, that changes from neighborhoods to one community,” LeDoux explained.

Here’s theCUBE’s complete interview with Ken Fisher, Terry LeDoux and Brian Lange, senior director of manufacturing, Salty Division and North American CMG Manufacturing, at The Hershey Company:

Insight #3: AI is turning ERP into proactive action.

As manufacturers push to modernize aging ERP systems, a new consensus centers on the idea that tools that don’t just record problems, but help solve them in real time. Traditional ERP can’t keep pace with today’s volatile supply chains, prompting a shift from static systems of record to more dynamic “systems of action,” according to Amit Sharma, president of manufacturing ERP at QAD.

“If a supplier sends a note saying that this entire delivery is going to be delayed, that information should not just sit in ERP,” Sharma said. “That’s an action, which means now what we have committed to our customers, we can’t deliver it. … This is where [the] system takes action based on the events that are happening.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete interview with Amit Sharma:

Moving toward action-oriented systems means that modern manufacturing needs to be fundamentally auditable. In complex ERP environments, success hinges on a clear path forward, which is why a structured benchmark is essential, according to Ricardo Leitao, senior vice president of global professional services, manufacturing and supply chain at QAD.

“We are helping [our customers] to really be successful with this approach that we’re calling systems of action,” Leitao told theCUBE. “Really helping them to make decisions, not just looking, ‘Okay, what is my data?’ No, no — we want to give a tool that will enable them to successfully manage their manufacturing processes.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete interview with Ricardo Leitao:

The push toward smarter, more proactive systems isn’t just happening in top-level discussions — it’s playing out on the factory floor itself. Modern manufacturing is seeing companies turn to AI to tame the complex processes, according to Dave Miller, director of enterprise applications at Hendrickson USA, LLC.

“There’s the helping people with the redundant work; [getting] rid of the repetitive work. The automation of tasks that are not value-added, right?” Miller said. “The second part is bringing new solution frameworks … because [if] they’re doing this repetitive work, we’re not having time to explore.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete interview with Dave Miller and Tom Roberts, vice president of strategic industry development at QAD:

To watch more of theCUBE’s coverage of the QAD Champions of Manufacturing event, here’s our complete event video playlist:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the QAD Champions of Manufacturing event. Neither QAD, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE