At IMTS 2018, like at any industrial trade show, the predominant theme was Industry 4.0. Although Industry 4.0 still has not scaled up to cover a significant percentage of manufacturing setups, its vision of near-total automation—and the promise of resulting cost savings—has clearly captured the industry’s imagination.

More importantly, even though the “lights out” factory is still a rare phenomenon, the connected automation technologies that form the backbone of Industry 4.0 are seeing widespread and growing deployment. These technologies also are making important differences in the manufacture of many types of products and, in industries like healthcare, even in the provision of services.