Manufacturing has spent the past decade chasing digital transformation, yet factories still measure progress by the screens on the floor rather than how fast knowledge turns into action. That distinction anchors a conversation between Tony Trim, Manufacturing Operations AI Leader at Eaton, and Stephen Hooper, SVP Operations Solutions at Autodesk, in the first installment of a three-part series.

Trim traces a career that began in oil and gas controls engineering, moved through data engineering, and now leads manufacturing AI strategy across more than two hundred Eaton facilities. Along the way, Trim’s view of the industry’s biggest obstacle shifted. The constraint was never the machine on the floor. It was the tribal knowledge locked inside people’s heads and scattered across disconnected systems.

That reframing runs through the discussion, from the digital thread connecting plant systems and data to a working definition of a digital factory: one where a change on the floor reaches the right person and triggers the right action within minutes rather than a shift or two.

Several themes carry through the conversation:

• Knowledge as the real constraint: Digital transformation works only when tribal knowledge becomes something every shift and plant can use.
• A shared data foundation: A unified namespace gives every signal the same meaning across every facility, without which every AI project starts from zero.
• Products over projects: Winning organizations build solutions meant to scale across every site, not prove out at one.

On the move? Take this conversation with you. If you don’t have time to finish the video, you can stream the complete, uninterrupted audio edition of this episode on the go.