Get ready for a front-row seat to Europe’s biggest automation event! In this bonus episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour, host Chris Luecke and Jake Hall – The Manufacturing Millennial – share their excitement and preview what’s ahead at Automatica 2025, taking place June 24–27 in Munich, Germany.

Chris and Jake discuss:

• What makes German manufacturing a global powerhouse in automation and vocational training
• What to expect from Automatica: major exhibitors, international tech showcases, and epic trade show booths
• Why this event is a must-attend for anyone in robotics, smart manufacturing, and industrial automation

Plus, they crack open a special "Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty" IPA, brewed just for the occasion, and share some of their favorite Munich spots to check out between sessions. Whether you're attending the event or watching from afar, this episode sets the stage for one of the year’s most important industrial showcases.

🎥 Don’t forget: Daily video recaps and a full post-show episode will follow!

We’re seeing a huge leap in potential when it comes to what AI can accomplish in industrial settings. Not only can it catch errors, it can provide intelligent insights to prevent them in the first place, reduce waste, save costs, and improve processes.

Recorded live from Automate 2025, we sat down with Alvin Clark, Senior AI Engineer at NVIDIA, to discuss AI agents in manufacturing and how they’re reshaping industrial inspections. We hear about all the different use cases of AI agents, including error detection and understanding the root cause of errors, saving costs, and even supplying training data to patch the gaps in “tribal knowledge” of manufacturing processes.

You’ll hear real examples of how AI agents have saved costs and reduced errors drastically when monitoring SOPs and how they can provide multimodal maintenance assistance. Alvin also takes us through how NVIDIA’s Metropolis works at helping developers create visual AI agents and why the next few years will see visual AI inspections take off in manufacturing.

In this episode, find out:

• Alvin shares his background in the AI space and why he saw potential in AI earlier than most
• Why 2012 was the real AI boom and how we saw a shift from the algorithm being king to data being king
• Alvin’s explanation for what an AI agent does in four stages
• How AI agents are evolving beyond capturing data to providing intelligence in industrial settings
• How vision inspection can perform not only real time error detection but also real time failure analysis
• Use cases for AI agents and examples of how Alvin has seen them most successful
• How AI agents could also address the skills gap and replace the multimodal “tribal knowledge” we’ll lose when people start retiring
• Alvin breaks down how Metropolis works to help developers build visual AI agents
• How simulation, training and data transform what AI agents can accomplish
• Alvin’s perspective on where manufacturers are in their industrial AI journeys
• The role of systems integrators in leading the AI revolution
• What the next phase of AI agents will look like

Enjoying the show? Please leave us a review here. Even one sentence helps. It’s feedback from Manufacturing All-Stars like you that keeps us going!

Tweetable Quotes:

• “Metropolis is a combination of models and tools that are used to build what we call vision analytics. So anytime you're looking at video images and you want to extract information from that, these are the tools that can help you do that.” - Alvin Clark
• “It's not really the ability to catch the error, it's the ability to, as quickly as possible understand the genesis that caused the error.” - Alvin Clark
•  ”If I had to kind of describe an AI agent, it is a collection of one or more models that can perceive, reason, and potentially plan and then execute.” - Alvin Clark

Links & mentions:

• NVIDIA Metropolis, automating physical spaces and infrastructure with interactive visual AI agents and services
• AlexNet, a convolutional neural network architecture developed for image classification tasks, like identifying a cat

Make sure to visit

Imagine having a tireless teammate watching your back 24/7, never missing a beat when it comes to keeping you safe. That’s exactly what AI agents in manufacturing are capable of today.

Spot AI uses cameras and AI agents to spot safety issues, send alerts, and collect data that can improve safety training in the future. Yes, a human could do all that. But who wants to spend 8 hours a day reviewing footage? In this episode, Dunchadhn Lyons, Director of Engineering, shares a real-world example of a safety manager freeing up time and reducing safety incidents by 40%.

He joins us at Batch Brewing for our Automate afterparty, along with this episode’s co-host, Jake Hall, aka The Manufacturing Millennial.

We explore how AI agents are transforming ordinary security cameras into intelligent safety monitors that can spot forklift near-misses, missing PPE, and operational bottlenecks before they become costly problems. Plus, we chat about how these "AI teammates" can capture and preserve the invaluable knowledge of experienced workers before they retire – addressing one of manufacturing's biggest challenges. Tune in for the full story and don’t forget to subscribe!

In this episode, find out:

• Dunchadhn breaks down the basics of what an AI agent in manufacturing is and how they’re designed to make our lives easier
• How Spot AI uses cameras as “AI teammates” to monitor for potential safety issues and use data for training
• How an AI agent could be used to fill in the gaps in knowledge after people start retiring in manufacturing
• Where Dunchadhn sees the future of AI agents headed and how Spot AI could expand beyond using cameras
• The best use cases for AI agents and Spot AI’s solution in manufacturing
• Dunchadhn shares an example of one workplace where they achieved a 40% reduction in safety issues
• How manufacturers can get started with improving safety with AI and why adopting Spot AI’s solution is simpler than you might think
• How to get buy-in from a team to use cameras for safety monitoring
• How Spot AI can also help businesses make operational improvements, with one example of a company avoiding millions in lost revenue
• Where can AI agents go in the future? Dunchadhn shares his predictions for the future of AI agents in manufacturing
• The best way to get more people onboard with AI agents

Enjoying the show? Please leave us a review here. Even one sentence helps. It’s feedback from Manufacturing All-Stars like you that keeps us going!

Tweetable Quotes:

• "A 40% reduction in safety incidents means that people are safer. It means you can go to work, get your job done, and you can go to your family without having a fear of ending up in the hospital for a couple of weeks."
•  "AI agents can serve as training mechanisms for other new human employees so that tribal knowledge is not lost."
• "These AI teammates are really about supporting humans, making humans safer, making humans more efficient, and augmenting human abilities. There's definitely no notion of replacement or monitoring."

Links & mentions:

• Spot AI, video AI agents for the physical world
• Batch Brewing, brewery and restaurant located in Corktown, Detroit, MI