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We know what we need. Companies just haven’t done the work to get there.

Learn how new technologies are redefining how manufacturers approach quality, productivity, and consistency, and companies that move early will create a meaningful competitive gap.

Michelle Bangert, managing editor of Quality, sat down with Sainyam Arora, our 2026 Quality Rookie of the Year, at the MAX event in Nashville.

When artificial intelligence enters the conversation in quality and continuous improvement (CI) circles, reactions tend to fall at two extremes. 

Quality inspection today must cope with growing demands.

Manufacturers continue to invest heavily in automation, cloud platforms, and artificial intelligence, yet many leaders still struggle to articulate whether those investments are delivering meaningful value, particularly across quality teams and functions.

Manufacturers have long understood the promise of AI’s potential, especially for improving product quality, growing employee productivity, and reducing errors on the plant floor. 

Automation promises efficiency, cost savings, and fewer errors. What it cannot do is fix a broken process.

Manufacturers today face a paradox: quality expectations continue to rise, yet the labor available to perform consistent, repeatable inspection continues to shrink.

Trevor Campbell, Sales Development Manager of Microscopy at Zeiss Industrial Quality Solutions, discusses artificial intelligence, microscopy, and a new manufacturing report deployed by Zeiss from the MAX Show in Nashville.