Human + Machine, Updated and Expanded

2 The Self-Aware Factory Floor AI in Production, Supply Chain, and Distribution

For centuries, factories have been the paragon of automation. And the people who work in factories, as a result, have often been measured by the standards of machines. So it’s no surprise that the relationship between people and machines in industry has been fraught, with human workers feeling as if they’ve been dealt a losing hand. But things aren’t as clear cut as they might first seem. As we discussed in the introduction, the second wave of business transformation was all about automating existing processes, and it was during this era that many humans were replaced by machines. In contrast, the third wave relies on adaptive processes that are reimagined from ...