The world of industrial manufacturing is becoming increasingly modularized. Specialist devices are communicating with one another and with a wider network in order to produce outcomes that would not be possible through other means. In order to do this, however, devices need to be able to connect with one another, either through physical connections or wireless ones.

Connectivity Is Becoming the Foundation of the Smart Factory

This shift has come about largely because advances in hardware have made it possible. Sensors are now small and cheap enough that they can be installed just about everywhere, and data can now be freely exchanged, and turned into actionable insight. To gauge the strength of the change, we might turn to Deloitte’s 2025 Smart Manufacturing and Operations Survey, which consulted around 600 executives from large US-based manufacturers. Around 92% of those executives claimed that smart manufacturing would be a main driver of competitiveness over the ensuing three years.

Connecting the Physical and Digital Manufacturing Worlds

Smart factories can be said to consist of two distinct ecosystems. There’s the physical world, including the devices themselves and the work they perform, and the digital one, which amounts to the data they collect. In order for the latter to inform the former, an intermediary layer of sensors and control equipment is required. Without this layer, data is unable to flow from one world into the other.

Of course, the quality of the connectors plays a big role in determining how successfully this can be done. Substandard hardware can cause false readings and persistent failures that can be difficult to isolate and troubleshoot.

Interoperability Is the Next Connectivity Challenge

Imagine a factory in which all devices work together through a common set of standards and protocols. Then imagine that you want to introduce a new device that doesn’t comply with these protocols. It’s easy to see how you might reconsider. By devising a common set of standards through which different machines and platforms can work together, we can strengthen competition within the space, and lower costs for everyone. That’s exactly what the Collaborative Ecosystems Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII) is offering, through its Smart Manufacturing Interoperability Platform.

What Greater Connectivity Enables Next

It would probably be a mistake to suppose that we’ve reached the limit of what can be achieved through connectivity in smart factories. The world of AI promises to deliver an entirely new way of approaching analytics, which we are only just discovering. The benefits of new advances might be weighed against the operational risks and cybersecurity implications they bring about.