“AGVs are just like Roombas,” Semle says. “They get stuck.” 

When that happens, operators need to know where the vehicle is, why it stopped and how to get it moving again. But according to Semle, many factories are still dealing with disconnected systems and inconsistent data structures that make those tasks far more difficult than they should be.  

“One exposes it over Modbus. One kind of does it over OPC UA, another one has a SQL database,” he says. “This is the problem.” 

Semle says those kinds of disconnected systems are becoming a bigger issue as manufacturers push toward AI-driven operations and advanced automation. 

“Factory data… is kind of a mess,” he says. “There’s no semantics.” 

To address those challenges, manufacturers are increasingly looking at standardized industrial data models and initiatives such as the Industrial Information Interoperability eXchange (i3X), an open, vendor-agnostic API framework designed to reduce data silos and improve interoperability across manufacturing systems. 

The goal of i3X is to create a common way for applications, machines and software platforms to exchange contextualized manufacturing information without relying on proprietary interfaces that limit portability and scalability. 

Semle expands on this in the full episode, including how manufacturers are beginning to organize factory data for AI, automation and real-time operational visibility across the plant floor. The full episode drops July 2.