Factory data doesn’t transform a business until people do. Live from Productronica 2025, I dig into why a decade of Industry 4.0 felt slower than promised and how the tide is turning as engineers connect lines with Hermes, bridge legacy SMEMA with adapters, and elevate insights to the factory layer through CFX. Our guest, David Graham of 4IR.UK, has spent years pushing past vendor silos and championing a simple idea: the most valuable interface in manufacturing is still human-to-human.

We break down what actually moved the needle—reliable machine APIs, repeatable data flows, and a pragmatic standards stack—and what didn’t, like bespoke one-offs that trapped value in custom code. The conversation tracks the journey from adjacency wins, such as SPI-to-printer feedback loops, to line-level stability and then to agentic AI that summarizes performance, accelerates quoting, and targets high-fit customers. Along the way, we examine why success stories remain hidden, how logos shifted from Industry 4.0 to AI without the necessary storytelling, and why internal “marketing” is really about keeping momentum and trust alive.

Talent is the hinge. New grads attracted by real AI problems are joining experienced process engineers on the shop floor. When domain knowledge meets modern software, pilots become production. Standards like Hermes and CFX turn integration from a one-off chore into an asset, giving teams clean data they can trust for quality, yield, and cost improvements. If you’re wrestling with ROI, start small, measure fast, and let the wins compound. Subscribe, share this with a teammate who owns connectivity or quality, and leave a review with the one AI use case you want solved next.

EMS@C-Level is hosted by global inspection leaders Koh Young (https://www.kohyoung.com) and Global Electronics Association (https://www.electronics.org)

You can see video versions of all of the EMS@C-Level pods on our YouTube playlist.