What does 2018 hold for the manufacturing industry?

Some of the biggest players in the industry have already started to embrace disruptive and cutting-edge technologies, but this year we will see smaller and medium sized manufacturers incorporating the same technologies into their processes with equally as effective results. The entire industry is on the brink of an upheaval parallel to the industrial revolutions it has experienced throughout history – those that centered around technologies like steam-powered machinery and the linear assembly machine. The pending industrial revolution will be underpinned by a range of technologies that have already begun to pervade their way across the sector, such as 3D printing and artificial intelligence, and will continue to do so in 2018. See also: Combatting the manufacturing industry's skills gap Perhaps the most important technological shift we will see across the manufacturing industry in 2018 is the increasing adoption of genuine artificial intelligence by manufacturers of varied size across the sector. There is a distinction to be made between the ostensible ai (colloquially known as'lowercase' ai) that we have seen dominating the press throughout 2017, and the genuine AI (known as'uppercase' AI) that will be rolled out across the sector this year.