The manufacturing industry has seen a lot of different changes in the last 150 years. Almost every major change has brought with it a revolution in the way things have been done. From the Cotton Gin to the present day, there have been three such revolutions over that span of time. We are now in our fourth revolution, the advent of Smart Manufacturing.

The most important cog in this Smart Manufacturing wheel is the advent of data. Data is all around us. It is in what we read, what we see, and what we experience daily. Data is the backbone of almost every manufacturing business and project.