52. The Thinking Factory: How AI Is Giving MES a Brain with Francisco Almada Lobo

<p>What does it take for AI to actually deliver on the factory floor? In this episode, we explore why most manufacturing AI pilots never make it to production, and what changes when you get the data architecture right.</p><p>Francisco Almada Lobo, CEO and Co-Founder at Critical Manufacturing, joins Phil Seboa and Ed Fuentes to discuss MES as the foundation for manufacturing AI, why context beats compute, and what regulated industries need before they can trust AI in production.</p><p>Key topics in this episode:</p><ul><li>What MES is and why it keeps expanding beyond process control</li><li>Why Audi's 100+ AI initiatives failed to scale to production</li><li>"Fat events": enriching IoT data with MES context for AI workloads</li><li>Design-time AI vs runtime AI in regulated manufacturing</li><li>The first FDA warning letter for unauthorized AI use</li><li>Why this technology revolution gives no time for adjustment</li></ul><p>This episode is proudly made possible by FlowFuse. FlowFuse is the industrial application platform that helps operations, maintenance, and IT teams connect any machine, move data between systems, and scale industrial applications across sites. It is built on Node-RED, with the security and governance you need for real production environments. Learn more at <a href="flowfuse.com" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">flowfuse.com</a>.</p><p>Connect with Francisco on LinkedIn: <a href="linkedin.com/in/falmadalobo" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">linkedin.com/in/falmadalobo</a></p><p>Connect with Phil on LinkedIn:<a href="linkedin.com/in/philseboa" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer"> linkedin.com/in/philseboa</a></p><p>Connect with Ed on LinkedIn: <a href="linkedin.com/in/edfuentes" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">linkedin.com/in/edfuentes</a></p><p>Learn more about Critical Manufacturing: <a href="criticalmanufacturing.com" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">criticalmanufacturing.com</a></p><p>Book mentioned: "Agentic Artificial Intelligence" by Pascal Bonnet</p>