From the oil patch to the assembly line, industry is being remade through digital technology, resulting in safer, more efficient, more productive and more agile operations. Smarter devices, proliferating sensors, ubiquitous networks and more powerful software applications are transforming virtually every aspect of the industrial asset lifecycle, integrating and distilling the “big data” associated with myriad digital systems into context-sensitive, actionable information delivered to the right people and systems, at the right time and in the right place. Together with new data-driven production technologies such as additive manufacturing and collaborative robotics, digital technology also is enabling entirely new business models as well as reducing the cost, time and risk of bringing new products to market—and of bringing new production capabilities on line.

This report brings together insights from dozens of industrial thought-leaders on what’s next, who’s involved, and the what/why/how industry is being remade through digital technology.