Before the Internet of Things, a technician would hook a digital multimeter up to a sensor, measure the output and evaluate whether equipment is running properly. Now there are smart sensors that have built-in diagnostics built. The technician’s job has expanded beyond taking rudimentary measurements and making a judgment call. Erik Fogleman from ConnStep, a consulting firm that works with Connecticut’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership, explains why today’s technicians need to learn how machines talk to each other and to the cloud and edge computing systems. They need to learn communications protocols that dictate how devices talk to each other, how to configure them, and how to troubleshoot them when they are not communicating. It’s not about more intelligent machines replacing technicians, but about machines providing technicians with more accurate “actionable intelligence.”