Anna Townshend is managing editor of Plant Services and has been a journalist and editor for almost 20 years. In addition to writing and editing thousands of articles in her career, she has been an active speaker on industry panels and presentations. In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Anna reads a piece that is part of our new Maintenance Mindset feature, where each week one of the Plant Services editors highlights important and interesting nuggets in the news about manufacturing and asset management.

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Smart Industry's Scott Achelpohl and Industry 4.0 thought leader Jeff Winter delve into a two-part chat on imagination in digital transformation ... how to dream about what's possible but also be mindful of what's practical. An intriguing discussion about mindset in manufacturing technology.

Joe Kuhn, CMRP, is a former plant manager, engineer, and global reliability consultant, and he is now president of Lean Driven Reliability. He is the author of the book “Zero to Hero: How to Jumpstart Your Reliability Journey Given Today’s Business Challenges” and the creator of the Joe Kuhn YouTube Channel, which offers content on starting your reliability journey and achieving financial independence. In our monthly podcast miniseries, Ask a Plant Manager, Joe considers a commonplace scenario facing the industry and offers his advice, as well as actions that you can take to get on track tomorrow. This episode offers insight into how managers deal with employees’ bad attitudes.

Even if you're listening to this after Halloween, please enjoy this special treat of a group discussion around all things candy. Where does our candy come from? What are people eating these days? Why do kids like gummy candy instead of recognizing that chocolate is the only thing worth eating? 

Most importantly, what's coming up from food manufacturers in the future? What great product will add inches to our waistlines in 2025?

The ask and answer some of these questions are:

• Linda Becker, editor-in-chief of Automatic Merchandizer and Vending Market Watch, titles that send her to vending machine and convenience store trade shows every year, candy-centric events at which companies share what's coming up in the world of sugar

Ryan Magee, newly appointed CEO of Cority, shares his thoughts on the impact that technology, particularly AI, is having on workplace safety, and what the future looks like for EHS professionals hoping to leverage new technology.

Greg Martin is founder at Equip LLC Automation Consulting, a software and electrical service provider in South Bend, Indiana, that works specifically with automated systems. Greg was in Chicago recently to explore the IMTS 2024 trade show, and met up with Thomas Wilk, chief editor of Plant Services, to trade their observations and reflect on the past 10 years of systems integration.

Editors Scott Achelpohl, Tom Wilk, and Dennis Scimeca sit down with Andrew Burton, the enterprise cloud software vendor's global industry director of manufacturing, about the IFS conference in Orlando, why the company wants to trailblaze with artificial intelligence and how, as its CEO said at the show, IFS wants to be the "undisputed leader in industrial software."

Nevermind machine learning … Andrew Halonen, founder of Amatrium and the AmatriumGPT tool, argues that LLMs offer multiple paths for manufacturers to expand their capabilities and extend their market reach.

Almost everyone's seen some version of this: You've got a great system in place that's producing measurable improvements, but your company gets a new division head or president or CEO, and some new shiny object becomes the focus. 

Ever wanted to ask an implementation person how they handle that? At the IndustryWeek Operations Leadership Summit this summer, an audience member put the question that bluntly to Marty Hallman, director of bearing operations at The Timken Co. Like most of us, Hallman's been through that sort of turmoil, and he explained how Timken keeps going with lean management principles, even when leadership changes.

Joining Hallman was Sam McPherson, president of the Lean Leadership Academy. In addition to talking leadership change, they discussed how to develop leaders internally, how to implement production-improving strategies and how to get the most of the training time they spend with up-and-coming leaders. 

In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Laura Davis, editor-in-chief of New Equipment Digest, sits down with Mark Harris, CEO of HeroWear, to explore the cutting-edge world of exosuits. These innovative wearable devices are changing workplace safety and productivity, particularly in industries where manual material handling is a daily challenge.

Harris shares insights into the development of HeroWear's exosuits, designed to reduce the physical strain on workers' bodies while improving comfort and usability. From addressing age-old back injury problems to boosting productivity and reducing employee turnover, exosuits are proving to be a valuable piece of PPE in the manufacturing and logistics sectors.