Automation World Gets Your Questions Answered

In this Automation World podcast, we chat with Rittal's Sarah Groden to explore modern manufacturers' challenges related to changing customer requirements, supply-chain disruptions, labor shortages, and accelerating production timelines. The key to staying competitive, Groden explains, is not simply reacting faster—it's designing agility into engineering and manufacturing processes from the very beginning.
We discuss how manufacturers can build agility into every stage of engineering and manufacturing by connecting digital engineering, standardized infrastructure, and integrated workflows.
This podcast is sponsored by Rittal, LLC 

In this Automation World podcast, we chat with Infinite Uptime Founder and Managing Director Raunak Bhinge to explore the trust problem with artificial intelligence and how vertical AI can overcome that problem. Our conversation explores:
What we mean by vertical AI
Why mere alerts from AI are not enough
Why industrial AI still needs humans in the loop
And we discuss how overcoming that gap enables industrial enterprises to realize more efficient, more productive autonomous industrial operations.
This podcast is sponsored by Infinite Uptime.

This episode is sponsored by Rockwell Automation.
We talk with Andy Stump, director of technical enablement at Rockwell Automation, about the latest findings from Rockwell Automation’s 11th annual State of Smart Manufacturing Report.
The discussion looks beyond the hype around AI to examine the broader industrial reality: Manufacturers are investing in connected systems, automation, robotics, digital twins and AI-enabled tools, while also managing a more complex risk environment shaped by workforce shortages, cybersecurity threats, rising costs and supply chain pressure.

In this Automation World podcast episode, sponsored by DigiKey and Phoenix Contact, host Chris McNamara, head of content for Automation World, sits down with Chris Barber, product marketing manager for Phoenix Contact, to discuss the future of industrial automation.
The episode focuses on how industrial automation is shifting toward web-based HMIs, industrial PCs, edge computing, and software-defined control. Chris Barber describes Phoenix Contact’s PLCnext approach, which combines traditional OT programming with IT-friendly tools and protocols to reduce integration complexity, improve real-time processing, and bridge the IT/OT gap. Barber cites a water-wastewater example where edge PCs improved local alarm handling and data reliability.
The discussion closes with Phoenix Contact’s hardware strengths, customer support, and future trends like cloud-edge convergence, smarter connected systems, and simpler deployment.

In this episode, we connect with Damantha Boteju, Configit's chief product and technology officer, to learn more about configuration lifecycle management and why manufacturers need consistent, connected configuration data for AI to deliver real, scalable business value.

In this episode, we connect with Jayesh Jariwala, senior project engineer with system integrator Applied Control Engineering to discuss virtual controller technology, hypervisors and virtualization in general and what these technologies mean for manufacturers.

CESMII's new i3X platform aims to standardize manufacturing APIs, enabling portable apps across vendor platforms and ending costly system fragmentation. We connect with Jonathan Wise, CTO at CESMII, to understand how i3X is design to help manufacturers, how it works with standards such as OPC UA, MQTT and ISA 95, as well as how it handles connectivity with legacy OT systems.

In this episode, we connect with Basma Ahmed, industrial Ethernet product manager at Weidmuller, to understand how selecting the right Ethernet switch for your industrial network depends on several key factors, including application requirements, distance, performance, security, monitoring and overall cost. This choice often comes down to understanding when an unmanaged or managed Ethernet switch or Single Pair Ethernet switch is the right fit within your overall network architecture. This episode is sponsored by DigiKey, a global distributor of electronic components and automation products that features Weidmuller products.

In this episode, we connect with Stefan Basenach, senior vice president of automation technology at ABB, to learn how ABB's new dual-environment architecture, called Automation Extended, enables the integration of AI, predictive maintenance and cybersecurity upgrades while protecting reliable core control functions in the distributed control system.

In this episode, we connect with Dale Hopkinson, senior product manager with Thales, a supplier of technologies for the aerospace, defense and security industry and a provider of cybersecurity and digital identity technologies, to learn how OEMs are leveraging modular software licensing to replace costly hardware variants, creating predictable revenue while delivering customizable capabilities to industrial customers.
This episode is sponsored by Thales.