The Intelligent Journey to the Factory of the Future

We often speak about the technology (re)evolution that is driving the intelligent factory and Industry 4.0 –more robots, machines with embedded sensors that send signals to a networked factory, and machines that "talk" to each other and to the larger enterprise system. What we don't often address is the role of the human in this intelligent factory operation. Pundits claim that the intelligent factory will replace workers with machines and will obsolete human intuition and decision-making through artificial intelligence (AI). What these pundits get wrong is that not every job can--or should--be displaced with technology. Instead, we should be thinking about how technology enhances human tasks and performance--which is why we at Intel recently studied over 150 workers from the factory floor to the C-suite, to better understand manufacturing workers' pain points, their beliefs about the future of their operations, and their best guess for future technologies.