When looking at the future of manufacturing, we wanted to gather thoughts and insights from our American Manufacturing Summit elite speaker Dr. Irene J. Petrick of Intel, an internationally recognized expert in strategic road mapping and innovation, and the Director of Business Strategy for the Industrial and Energy Solutions Division in Intel’s Internet of Things Group. At Intel, it is Dr.Petrick’s job to provide leadership in the integration of business and technology strategy and to develop solutions that will drive exciting technology to create smart edge devices and end-to-end solutions. In the manufacturing space, there have been major shifts towards smart manufacturing, with a goal to optimize the manufacturing process entirely. Dr. Irene Petrick believes that smart manufacturing triggers are likely to emerge from needs-based business drivers such as operational efficiency and flexibility, ROI, and enhanced customer relationships, and social accelerators such as a growing middle class with an appetite for customized products and a declining manufacturing workforce. Solutions that support the convergence of operating technologies and information technologies will accelerate this manufacturing transformation. It is important to note that there are four shifts that drive smart manufacturing adoption: Modular Manufacturing Digital Threads Networked Ecosystems Human and A.I. Choreography Today’s manufacturers have the opportunity to increase the transparency in their operations using IoT technologies that will acquire and transfer data from the asset through the fog to the cloud, resulting in efficiency ROI, and closer customer relationships, Dr. Petrick notes. …