As manufacturers and processors globally navigate through an era marked by rapid technological advancements, trade and geopolitical uncertainties, and evolving consumer demands, the need for flexible, interoperable, and software-centric automation systems has never been more critical. Open software-defined automation is not just an incremental improvement; it's a strategic imperative that enables industries to enhance their competitiveness, operational resilience, efficiency, and sustainability. In this podcast, Craig Resnick, Vice President, from the ARC Advisory Group. and Hany Fouda, Senior Vice President, Process Automation, Industrial Automation Business, at Schneider Electric, will provide their insights on the transformative impact of open software-defined systems, explore the challenges faced by industry leaders, the role of Schneider Electric in driving this transformation, the benefits of adopting open software-defined automation, and real-life applications and future directions that affect industrial automation users globally.

Would you like to be a guest on our growing podcast?

Do you have an intriguing or thought provoking topic you'd like to discuss on our podcast? Please contact Our Producer Tom Cabot at: Tcabot@Arcweb.com

View all the episodes here: https://thedigitaltransformationpodcast.buzzsprout.com

In our first ARC Advisory Group SPARC podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Steve Blackwell, Head of the Manufacturing Center of Excellence at Amazon Web Services (AWS), about the transformative shift towards Software Defined Manufacturing (SDM) in the Era of Agentic AI.1 We explored how Agentic AI is becoming the "brain and central nervous system" of the future factory, orchestrating complex digital workflows across the enterprise.2

In this second episode, we bring that vision down to the factory floor. We're moving from the digital intent to the physical action—from the brain to the "muscles" of the operation. Steve and I discuss the physical embodiment of SDM through robotics, exploring AWS's evolving strategy and the rise of a new, more capable class of automation: Physical and Embodied AI.

Would you like to be a guest on our growing podcast?

Do you have an intriguing or thought provoking topic you'd like to discuss on our podcast? Please contact Our Producer Tom Cabot at: Tcabot@Arcweb.com

View all the episodes here: https://thedigitaltransformationpodcast.buzzsprout.com

In the first three episodes of this series, we rediscovered our industry’s foundational challenges, tracked the rise of what ARC calls the Industrial Data Fabric, and highlighted the domain-specific innovators driving much of the momentum. This journey has established the critical need for clean, organized, and AI-ready data as the bedrock for future innovation.

Now, we take the next logical step. In this fourth episode, we explore how all that AI-ready data gets activated. How do we move from data foundations to the new wave of reliable, agentic AI solutions? As I teased in my recent blog, Industrial AI Needs Context Engineers, NOT Prompt Engineers, this transition requires a deliberate and structured approach.

I was thrilled to welcome Vatsal Shah, co-founder and CEO of Litmus Automation, to discuss this critical link. Vatsal's journey from a hands-on industrial automation engineer frustrated by integrating systems from Rockwell, Siemens, and Yokogawa to founding a company at the heart of Industrial DataOps provides a unique and pragmatic perspective on what it takes to succeed.

Would you like to be a guest on our growing podcast?

Do you have an intriguing or thought provoking topic you'd like to discuss on our podcast? Please contact Our Producer Tom Cabot at: Tcabot@Arcweb.com

View all the episodes here: https://thedigitaltransformationpodcast.buzzsprout.com