Stop pretending to know it all if you want to be a great manufacturing leader, and AI tools could help you do that.

Those were a few of the insights from an experts panel discussion on the proper uses of kaizen, lean and other continuous improvement strategies in the modern factory. Responding to an audience question, AI took center stage and some of the brightest minds in operational excellence detailed how these tools could improve managers' abilities to empower workforces and drive improvements.

The panel for the livestream was:

• Katie Anderson, leadership consultant, speaker, and learning enthusiast, author of "Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn" as well as a regular IndustryWeek contributor
• John Dyer, author of "The Façade of Excellence: Defining a New Normal of Leadership," as well as a frequent speaker on topics of leadership, continuous improvement, teamwork and culture change
• Michael Bremer, author of "How to Do a Gemba Walk" and "Learn to See the Invisible"
• Jill Jusko, executive editor and continuous improvement guru at IndustryWeek

Steve Strong of Concept Systems and Benjamin Kurth of Applied Manufacturing Technologies join the podcast and Smart Industry's Scott Achelpohl to talk automation and why “easier” doesn’t always mean inexpensive and why plug-and-play isn’t always your answer.

The number one concern for US manufacturers continues to be the shortage of available labor – which has prompted their steady progress toward automation, and then to digitalization, and lately to Artificial Intelligence, to fill in the missing resources. All that progress is creating a significant volume of data that is vulnerable to attack. A cloud-based software developer assesses the problem and offers some tips for addressing the risk.

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How Manufacturers Can Effectively and Securely Manage Data As cyber threats escalate, embrace cloud-based systems and adhere to best practices for data security. Written by Matt Heerey Read by Robert Brooks Read the article