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Manufacturing Hub

Manufacturing Hub

By: Vlad Romanov & Dave Griffith
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We bring you manufacturing news, insights, discuss opportunities, and cutting edge technologies. Our goal is to inform, educate, and inspire leaders and workers in manufacturing, automation, and related fields.© 2026 Vlad Romanov & Dave Griffith Economics Management Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Ep. 268 - David Nichols of Loupe on Claude Code, AI Retrofits, and the End of the SI Moat

    Ep. 268 - David Nichols of Loupe on Claude Code, AI Retrofits, and the End of the SI Moat
    Aug 6 2026
    David Nichols of Loupe explains what actually changed in automation engineering this year, and why control retrofits just got far cheaper.Nearly twenty years into building high performance controls, David Nichols is blunt about what AI did to his business: what used to take six weeks now takes two, and his team ships roughly five times more software per sprint. An engineer dropped the raw documentation from a failing robotic cell into a folder, asked Claude for a state diagram, and got a reverse engineered flow chart in thirty minutes that beat anything the customer had. The error recovery gap causing the downtime was visible right there in the chart. A SASE member handed a model a hundred page ethernet specification and got working code for every function, plus tests, on the first try. That was a six week project. It took a day.The implication is the sharpest part of the conversation. Software rewrites used to be the dumbest thing an engineer could propose, because software was expensive and full of unknowns. That logic has inverted. If a rewrite takes a week and produces better documentation, better tests, and better coverage, then brownfield modernization stops being a risk calculation. His words: open season on old controllers. For an industry sitting on Windows 7 machines and undocumented cells one PC failure away from stopping a line, that is a different economic picture entirely.Vlad walks David through the full project lifecycle, and the answers stay practical. Discovery becomes a context gathering exercise where interview transcripts and a drawer full of legacy PDFs turn into control diagrams and proposals in days. Development becomes worth treating as a real software engineering project, because source control, digital twins, and automated testing are exactly what these models are fluent in. David is equally direct about platforms: the bottleneck in automation was never technical, it is cultural. His analogy is a shop that insists on carburetors because that is what the technicians know. The close tackles the chat's harder questions, including what is left of a software moat once building software is trivial. His book pick is Richard Rhodes and The Making of the Atomic Bomb.About David NicholsDavid Nichols is co-founder of Loupe, a West Coast automation engineering and systems integration company he started in 2007. Loupe does high performance controls work across aerospace, semiconductors, and metal cutting, built largely on the B&R Industrial Automation platform. He also founded SASE, the Society of Automation Software Engineers, a free community of roughly two thousand engineers. This is his fourth appearance on Manufacturing Hub, following episodes 29, 53, and 127.https://loupe.teamTimestamps0:00 Introduction2:45 Loupe, 20 years of controls, and the SASE community8:40 Carburetors in industrial automation: culture, not technology11:20 The ChatGPT moment versus the Claude Code moment20:20 Inside an integrator: six week sprints become two21:30 Reverse engineering a robotic cell in 30 minutes26:10 A 100 page ethernet spec turned into working code in a day27:50 Does this change who gets to be a builder40:40 AI across the project lifecycle from discovery to handoff49:00 How to actually get started, and what to prompt53:20 If software is no longer a moat, what is57:50 Predict the future, career advice, and the book pickReferencesSASE: https://sase.spaceClaude: https://claude.aiClaude Code: https://claude.com/claude-codeSendCutSend: https://sendcutsend.comAcquired Podcast: https://www.acquired.fmAbout Your HostsVladimir Romanov is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to de-risk modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:Control System Modernization Strategy: https://www.joltek.com/blog/control-system-modernization-strategyEdge Computing and AI Value from Manufacturing Data: https://www.joltek.com/blog/edge-computing-ai-value-manufacturing-dataDave Griffith is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.liveLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-networkYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub
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    1 hr and 8 mins
  • Ep. 267 - Ujjwal Kumar of Siemens on Deglobalization, Reshoring, and Adaptive Manufacturing

    Ep. 267 - Ujjwal Kumar of Siemens on Deglobalization, Reshoring, and Adaptive Manufacturing
    Jul 30 2026
    Deglobalization is rewriting where factories get built, and Ujjwal Kumar of Siemens explains what has to change on the plant floor before reshoring actually works.For thirty years the manufacturing playbook was labor arbitrage. Move high volume, low mix production to wherever disciplined labor was cheapest, then ship it back. Ujjwal Kumar, President of Automation for Siemens Digital Industries in the Americas, argues that model has quietly stopped making sense. Demand has fragmented into high mix, lower volume, regionally specific production, and the factories in Suzhou running on robots and autonomous systems no longer carry a cost advantage over the same operation in Chicago. When the labor content collapses, the business case for distance collapses with it. That single shift explains more about the current reshoring wave than any tariff headline.The trigger was not one event. Supply chain disruption after COVID proved that geographic proximity to supply was a profitability advantage, not a nice to have. Then came the political shock: vaccine access turned out to be governed by country of citizenship rather than global distribution, and leaders across every region started sorting industries into a folder marked critical. That folder now holds semiconductors, steel, power generation, defense, space, and life sciences. Ujjwal walks through where the money is actually landing right now, including AI data centers in remote locations that demand autonomous and remote operations, power generation across fossil, renewable, nuclear, and hydro, and a level of greenfield life sciences investment in the United States he has not seen in decades. The life sciences point is the sharpest one in the episode. Drug manufacturing left as mass produced batch operations and is returning as cell and gene therapy, personalized medicine, and precision biologics, which means lot sizes of one and R&D sitting physically next to production. The design it here, build it there model taught in business schools simply does not survive that.About Ujjwal KumarUjjwal Kumar is President of Automation for Siemens Digital Industries in the Americas. A mechanical engineer by training with an MBA from the Michigan Ross School of Business, he began his career at General Motors in Detroit and went on to spend ten years at GE and seven years at Honeywell Process Solutions before leading Teradyne Robotics, one of the largest physical AI based robotics platforms. He oversees the Siemens automation portfolio spanning discrete, process, and intralogistics automation, and he continues to mentor MBA students at Michigan Ross.Timestamps0:00 Introduction2:00 Career path from General Motors to Siemens6:10 What deglobalization means for manufacturing9:00 COVID, vaccine quotas, and the reshoring trigger13:05 Labor arbitrage versus automation arbitrage15:50 Attracting the next generation of factory workers19:35 Why semiconductor reshoring will take years23:00 Tribal knowledge and the documentation problem26:00 Where the investment is going right now32:30 Adaptive manufacturing and the AI hype question35:30 Platforms, ecosystems, and Siemens Xcelerator43:20 Careers, AI, and advice for engineersReferencesSiemens Xcelerator Marketplace: https://xcelerator.siemens.com/global/en.htmlThis episode is sponsored bySiemens is a technology company focused on industry, infrastructure, transport, and healthcare, and it supplies industrial automation hardware and industrial software to manufacturers worldwide. Its Digital Industries business covers discrete automation, process automation, intralogistics, and the Siemens Xcelerator platform.https://www.siemens.comAbout Your HostsVladimir Romanov is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to de-risk modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:Understanding Supply Chains: https://www.joltek.com/blog/understanding-supply-chainsManufacturing Challenges with New Machinery and Plants: https://www.joltek.com/blog/manufacturing-challenges-new-machinery-plantDave Griffith is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.liveLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-networkYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Ep. 266 - Automate 2026 Reality Check: AI, Virtual PLCs, Ignition, and Plant Modernization

    Ep. 266 - Automate 2026 Reality Check: AI, Virtual PLCs, Ignition, and Plant Modernization
    Jul 18 2026

    After several weeks away from the podcast, Dave Griffith and Vladimir Romanov return to Manufacturing Hub to unpack their experiences at Automate 2026 and discuss what the event revealed about the current state of industrial automation.

    Automate showcased an enormous range of robotics, industrial AI, machine vision, software, cloud connectivity, and emerging automation technology. However, some of the most revealing conversations were not about futuristic factories. They were about PLC 5 migrations, aging SLC systems, obsolete PanelView terminals, industrial networks, basic data collection, and how platforms such as Ignition actually connect to plant floor equipment.

    Vlad shares what he learned from demonstrating a complete packaging line environment built around a CompactLogix PLC, an industrial computer, Ignition, and production performance data. The demonstration was designed to show how manufacturers can use OEE, downtime information, and machine states to identify production bottlenecks and determine where capital investment could deliver the greatest return. Instead, many attendees wanted to understand the underlying architecture, where Ignition runs, how it connects to PLCs, what protocols are required, and whether it can replace traditional HMI and SCADA platforms.

    Dave discusses his experience inside the Ignition ecosystem booth, the FactoryStack cloud demonstration, the advantages of MQTT in a difficult trade show network environment, and his Automate panel on software defined automation and the factory of the future. He also introduces Elephant, an industrial log analysis and contextualization tool being developed to help users identify meaningful patterns across Ignition gateways, reduce system noise, compare facilities, and diagnose intermittent problems.

    The conversation then moves across the industrial automation stack. Dave and Vlad examine virtual PLCs from Siemens, Phoenix Contact, and other vendors, including where software based control may provide value and where it may add unnecessary organizational complexity. They discuss AI generated PLC code, the limitations of translating functional specifications into reliable control applications, and why tools that produce 80 or 90 percent of an automation solution still require experienced engineers to validate the final result.

    They also explore AI assisted HMI and SCADA development, Ignition 8.3, MCP servers, high performance HMI design, and the risks of providing AI agents with uncontrolled access to production systems. At the MES layer, they question whether manufacturers should build custom applications through vibe coding or focus instead on creating clean, contextualized, well governed data that can support many future applications.

    The central conclusion is that AI tools, virtual controllers, cloud platforms, and dynamically generated applications will continue to improve. However, manufacturers still need reliable controls, secure networks, maintainable architectures, experienced people, and ownership of their operational data. The companies that establish those foundations today will have the greatest freedom to adopt whatever technologies emerge next.

    Dave and Vlad also preview the 2026 Ignition Community Conference in Sacramento, upcoming Manufacturing Hub conversations, new demonstrations, and several projects the community will see throughout the remainder of the year.

    Join us for a detailed and candid discussion about Automate 2026, Ignition, industrial AI, virtual PLCs, HMI and SCADA development, MES, MQTT, data architecture, and what manufacturers should prioritize next.
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    1 hr and 28 mins
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