Building Smarter Organizations: Transforming to Intelligent Operations

10 Memorable Insights

1. Matthew Frye: “Intelligent operations today is really speaking to visibility and control across the field and back to the office… automating frontline data collection, connecting data and workflows and dashboards to decision makers, and really reducing those manual handoffs that can cause problems.”
2. Joanne Friedman, PhD: “Operational intelligence is kind of table stakes these days for large manufacturing organizations… It means agentic AI. It means AI that can provide real-time feedback on equipment, predictive maintenance windows, and spare parts management.”
3. Martin Davis: “Imagine a maintenance supervisor walking through a plant using a head-up display that instantly identifies machinery, provides core performance data, shows maintenance logs, and flags potential issues before they become critical.”
4. Elizabeth Martinez: “This is just the next level of tools to help us keep that throughput and flow going. Time equals money, and we want to leverage AI tools to solve problems as fast as possible, predict these problems, or get ahead of these problems.”
5. Joseph Puglisi: “The shrinking workforce, the lack of professionals in plumbing and carpentry… is going to drive construction to where these technologies will become table stakes, or you just won’t be able to deliver.”
6. Joanne Friedman, PhD: “We must capture the expertise of the workforce not only before it retires but also to use for training new people entering that workforce.”
7. Derek Butts: “When you look at intelligent operations, it really depends on the industry… employing remote sensor technology helps minimize risks and allows you to monitor what you need to know about equipment before it fails.”
8. John Patrick Luethe: “There’s no one common way for all these devices to communicate. The technology and software side is rapidly evolving, while devices in the field often have very long shelf lives.”
9. Matthew Frye: “We’re going to be getting data that’s coming in, put through filters by AI, which will give visibility to leadership to make good decisions and keep people safe on a daily basis.”
10. Joanne Friedman, PhD: “Agents are meant to run autonomously, but I don’t know a single huge manufacturer in the world that’s going to trust an agent right out of the gate. You need to show reliability, ensure data is clean and accurate, and build trust across stakeholder groups.”