AI-powered predictive maintenance has been on the radar for years, but for most facilities, it still hasn’t fully landed.

Chris sits down remotely with Colin Morris, Senior Director of Solution Consulting at MaintainX, the AI-powered maintenance and asset management platform built for the industrial frontline. Colin has spent eight years working in this space, long enough to have watched maintenance shift from an afterthought to a strategic asset across North American manufacturing.

They cover the real barriers to AI adoption in maintenance: unstructured data sitting across disconnected systems, outdated assumptions about what predictive tools should deliver, and the foundational steps most facilities skip before they’re ready.

Colin walks through what parts data to collect and why, how maintenance has evolved from cost center to cost saver, and where agentic AI is taking the industry next, including what scheduling looks like when an agent does the first pass and a human approves the plan.

In this episode, find out:

• Whether today’s manufacturers have the data infrastructure AI actually needs, and why having data and having usable data are two very different things
• The gap between what AI-driven predictive maintenance promises and what tends to happen when facilities try to put it into practice
• Why a predictive system that shows no faults can mean things are working exactly as they should, and how confirmation bias leads teams to misread that signal
• The foundations most facilities skip when digitizing, and why jumping ahead without them creates problems that are hard to undo
• What parts information every facility should have on record, why it matters more than most teams realize, and what happens when a critical component is not catalogued
• How maintenance’s status has changed over eight years, from a cost center most facilities avoided spending on, to a core part of a facility’s digital strategy
• What AI looks like across maintenance operations today and where it genuinely adds value versus where human judgment still needs to lead

Enjoying the show? Please leave us a review here. Even one sentence helps. It’s feedback from Manufacturing All-Stars like you that keeps us going!

Tweetable Quotes:

• “A lot of customers do have the data. The biggest challenge is it’s super unstructured and in different systems, so getting it into a format AI can actually use is still a huge challenge.”
• “People expect predictive maintenance to surface issues, but if an asset is running well, nothing’s going to happen. No insights are sometimes good insights. That means things are operating the way they should.”
• “Historically, about 60% of a technician’s time is admin work. If you can give even 10–20% of that time back, that’s a huge gain in actual wrench time.”

Links & mentions:

• MaintainX, helping industrial teams manage work orders, asset performance, parts, and labor with AI-driven insights that reduce downtime and boost operational excellence
• Nick Haase on Manufacturing Happy Hour, episode 206 featuring MaintainX’s Co-Founder and the company’s first appearance on the podcast
• Left Field Brewery, established in Toronto in 2013 and brews a series of baseball-inspired, distinct and full-flavoured beers

Make sure to visit http://manufacturinghappyhour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.

Mentioned in this episode:

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Most regions have pockets of manufacturing strength. Very few have a manufacturing ecosystem. Matt Bogoshian has spent 15 years trying to change that.

In this episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour, host Chris Luecke sits down remotely with Matt Bogoshian, Executive Director of the American Manufacturing Communities Collaborative (AMCC) – the nation’s only designated National Manufacturing Community of Practice.

Matt brings the on-the-ground experience of someone who has spent years helping communities across the US turn good intentions into real, durable systems change.

Together they dig into the Big Six elements that every thriving regional manufacturing ecosystem needs, the five steps to creating lasting systems change, and why trust is the one precondition that has to come before everything else.

Matt also shares the story of ‘What’s So Cool About Manufacturing’, a program getting middle school students inside real factories and changing how the next generation sees manufacturing careers.

In this episode, find out:

1. What it takes to build a regional manufacturing ecosystem of support, and why it requires more than any single organization or initiative
2. Why the ‘American project’ can’t succeed long-term without a strong base of manufacturing priority products, and what that means for every community in the US
3. The five steps to creating lasting systems change: relationship building, storytelling, strategy, activation, and the critical step most initiatives never reach
4. Why trust is the precondition for every other element of ecosystem building
5. What the Big Six elements of a thriving manufacturing ecosystem are, and why most regions are underperforming in at least four of them
6. How the Big Six framework helps diagnose where any region stands, and what coordination looks like when it’s working
7. Why the gap between regions that thrive and those that don’t is rarely about resources, and what it’s really about
8. How ‘What’s So Cool About Manufacturing’ is changing how young people see manufacturing careers, and why there’s no ceiling on where those careers can go

Enjoying the show? Please leave us a review here. Even one sentence helps. It’s feedback from Manufacturing All-Stars like you that keeps us going!

Tweetable Quotes:

1. “The American project is not going to thrive long term unless we have a strong cornerstone of manufacturing priority products.” – Matt Bogoshian
2. “Trust is the coin of the realm. Having trusted relationships is really a precondition to everything else.” – Matt Bogoshian
3. “There’s no ceiling on how high a kid could go in manufacturing.” – Matt Bogoshian

Links & mentions:

1. American Manufacturing Communities Collaborative (AMCC), representing a coalition of nationwide communities with the shared goal of revitalizing American manufacturing
2. The Buena Vista, opened in 1916, this corner spot in San Francisco serves its signature Irish coffee alongside American staples

Make sure to visit http://manufacturinghappyhour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.