You can’t accuse Volkswagen’s Dirk Voigt of having his head in the clouds—he’ll take it as a compliment. The head of digital production at VW, Voigt and a team of manufacturing and IT pros are developing an industrial cloud computing system to amalgamate production data from more than 120 factories. The objective: greater efficiency and lower costs.

Most manufacturers agree that digital transformation is necessary to remain competitive today and thrive tomorrow. Many large companies have already begun initiatives. But, when asked to quantify the impact of those initiatives on the bottom line, they often come up short.

LOUISVILLE, KY—GE Appliances, a Haier company, has graduated the first engineer from its new Industry 4.0 Development Program, which targets recent engineering college graduates or midcareer employees who want to work at the company’s nine smart factories in the U.S.