Companies achieve manufacturing excellence when people have the tools they need to produce high-quality work. On the shop floor, this comes about through the marriage of workers and machinery and the refining of processes through constant care and iteration. 

Manufacturing in the age of Industry 4.0, digitally connected machines and smart factories require a new breed of engineers who are equipped with a fresh set of skills. That’s why Arizona State University recently launched the School of Manufacturing Systems and Networks.

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.

When preproduction of the next-generation Tempest fighter jet ramps up next year, assemblers at BAE Systems will be using cutting-edge technology.