Real-Time Measurement for Smarter Manufacturing Substitutions
This week: Raw metal to road-ready every 67 seconds, 50 Years of DCS, sole manufacturing focus, chronoamperometry and SensorLM, WAIC 2025 review, and Carbon Open Source ERP/MES.
Shop Talk
Capturing this week's zeitgeist
Alaska serves as a unique "leading indicator" for the broader U.S. economy, according to San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, experiencing "the perfect storm" of current economic pressures: inflation, tariffs, and supply chain disruptions. When steel tariffs made building materials prohibitively expensive, Alaskan builders pivoted to locally abundant timber, leveraging federal regulations that allow residents to harvest up to 10,000 board feet annually from National Forests. This timber-for-steel substitution exemplifies the resourceful innovation that makes Alaska valuable as an economic barometer, solutions emerge from constraints months before other regions face similar pressures. The takeaway for operators: identify your own "Alaskan indicators" pressure points in your value chain that signal broader trends and map local resources available when global supply chains are disrupted.
Find your leading indicators of industrial technology with an Exponential Industry subscription:
Assembly Line
This week's Industry 5.0 breakthroughs and frontier technologies of the built world.
🛻 Inside Toyota Texas Plant: Raw Metal to Road-Ready in 2 Days, 1 Every 67sec
The effect of the software-defined vehicle on chassis systems — interview with BWI Group /S&P AutoTechInsight/
Hyundai's Chennai plant taps 20 billion data points to power smart manufacturing /ETManufacturing/
Steyr goes electric: BMW Group launches series production of electric motors for Neue Klasse /BMW/
Group Sector Automotive introduces itself as AUMOVIO with Technologies for Future Mobility /Continental/
🎛️ ExxonMobil, Honeywell Discuss 50 Years of Distributed Control System Evolution
Host Keith Larson interviews Brian Reynolds (Honeywell CTO), Alicia Kempf (Honeywell Director Offering Management), and David Patin (ExxonMobil TDC Modernization Program Lead Engineer). The discussion took place at the 2025 Honeywell User Group meeting, celebrating 50 years since the first Honeywell TDC 2000 installation in 1975.
The conversation traces the evolution of distributed control systems from centralized cabinet rooms in the 1970s-80s to today's truly distributed architecture with Universal IO and virtualization. Key developments include automated device commissioning, which reduced loop checks from hours to minutes, and the ability to modernize legacy systems on-process without shutdowns.
John McEleney on Evolution of CAD, Platform Shifts and Future Innovation /Engtechnica/
🍬 Why Haribo Refuses to Expand Beyond Gummies
Haribo is one of the largest gummy candy manufacturers in the world, with its Wisconsin factory producing 60 million Goldbear gummies a day. Hershey, best known for chocolate, has expanded into pretzels and dipped fruit snacks. Ferrara, meanwhile, owns a range of chewy, hard and powder-based candy brands like Jelly Belly, Laffy Taffy and Fun Dip. But Haribo takes a different approach: focusing solely on gummy candy as its advantage.
🌡️ Chronoamperometry with Room-Temperature Ionic Liquids: Sub-Second Inference Techniques
Chronoamperometry (CA) is a fundamental electrochemical technique used for quantifying redox-active species. However, in room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs), the high viscosity and slow mass transport often lead to extended measurement durations. This paper presents a novel mathematical regression approach that reduces CA measurement windows to under 1 second, significantly faster than previously reported methods, which typically require 1-4 seconds or longer. By applying an inference algorithm to the initial transient current response, this method accurately predicts steady-state electrochemical parameters without requiring additional hardware modifications. The approach is validated through comparison with standard chronoamperometric techniques and is demonstrated to maintain reasonable accuracy while dramatically reducing data acquisition time. The implications of this technique are explored in analytical chemistry, sensor technology, and battery science, where rapid electrochemical quantification is critical. Our technique is focused on enabling faster multiplexing of chronoamperometric measurements for rapid olfactory and electrochemical analysis.
Read more at arXiv
Real-Time Measuring Method Extends Lifespan and Enhances Safety of Batteries /Fraunhofer IFAM/
SensorLM: Learning the language of wearable sensors /Google Research/ a new family of sensor–language foundation models trained on 60 million hours of data, connecting multimodal wearable sensor signals to natural language for a deeper understanding of our health and activities.
Tesla supplier Panasonic spurns solid-state batteries as ‘niche’ /FT/ while NJIT Unlocks 'New' Materials to Replace Lithium-Ion Batteries /NJIT/
Ambiq Announces Launch of Initial Public Offering /Ambiq/
New Product Introduction
Highlighting new and innovative facilities, processes, products, and services.
🦾🤖🦿 WAIC 2025: Shanghai Electric Debuts First Industrial Humanoid Robot "SUYUAN," Advancing Next-Gen Intelligent Manufacturing through Holistic Value Chain Layout
With 38 degrees of freedom (DoF) and 275 TOPS of on-device computation power, SUYUAN delivers precise operations and dynamic movements, making it adaptable to a wide range of industrial application scenarios. This launch represents a significant milestone in Shanghai Electric's humanoid robotics journey, further strengthening its comprehensive value chain for industrial humanoid solutions.
Read more at PR Newswire
Recapped Mech-Mind's Embodied Intelligence "Eye-Brain-Hand" AI Tech Showcase at WAIC 2025 /YouTube/
World's Largest Factory for Humanoid Robots, WorkFar now Offers Contract Manufacturing too /PR Newswire/
LimX Dynamics launches LimX Oli full-size humanoid robot /The Robot Report/
Register for the A3 Humanoid Robot Forum in Seattle on September 23, 2025 /A3/
🚚🦾 The World's Most Technologically Advanced Forklift Designed for Trailer Loading and Unloading
Introducing the Navflex Solution. Capable of loading and unloading trailers of nearly any type, with nearly any pallet configurations, anywhere in the world.
Control One takes agentic AI, vision-based approach to warehouse autonomy /AutomatedWarehouse/
🫙 KraussMaffei revolutionizes glass fiber processing – the new CFP technology
With its new Chopped Fiber Processing (CFP) technology, KraussMaffei is setting a milestone in the processing of fiber-reinforced thermoplastics. This innovative process enables the direct, fiber-friendly compounding of polypropylene (PP) and chopped glass fibers in the injection molding process for the first time.
The CFP technology enables plastic processors to individually dose and mix polymers and fibers. This allows them to develop their own formulations for components and build up material expertise, giving them a targeted competitive advantage. At the same time, savings in material usage lead to cost reductions of up to 30 percent and a noticeable reduction in the product carbon footprint (PCF) through inline compounding. Thanks to the material savings and process advantages that can be achieved, the return on investment (ROI) is less than one year.
Read more at KraussMaffei
ENGEL presents a compact foaming concept with high material savings at K 2025 /Sustainable Packaging News/
Solarcycle produces recycled glass test module with ‘peak performance’ /PV Tech/
📖 Carbon Open Source ERP/MES for Manufacturing
The open-source manufacturing ERP/MES/QMS. Perfect for complex assembly, HMLV, and configure to order manufacturing. Carbon was built after years of building end-to-end manufacturing systems with off-the-shelf solutions. Realizing that:
Modern, API-first tooling didn't exist
Vendor lock-in bordered on extortion
There is no "perfect ERP" because each company is unique
The OSS blueprint for the Industrial IoT /United Manufacturing Hub/
Rillet raises $70M to replace 20th-century accounting software with AI-native ERP built by accountants /GlobeNewswire/
$500 Cheap and Easy Jet Engine for Long Range UAVs /Fang on X/

Business Transactions
This week's top funding events, acquisitions, and partnerships across industrial value chains.
Forward Deployed Venture Capital has raised a $45 million defense and security fund from individuals and institutional sources. /Bloomberg/
A €100 million investment to create an innovation hub in Sicily where art, research, sustainability and technology meet in a hub of immersive arts and creative technologies. /StartupItalia/
🇺🇸 SiMa.ai Raises $85M to Scale Physical AI, Bringing Total Funding to $355M
SiMa.ai, a pioneer in delivering purpose-built hardware and software solutions for Physical AI, announced it has raised $85 million in an oversubscribed round, bringing total capital raised to $355 million. The latest round was led by Maverick Capital, with continued participation from existing investors and new investor StepStone Group.
This funding will fuel SiMa.ai's global expansion and accelerate the scale-up of its Physical AI platform, including increased investment in software innovation, go-to-market operations, customer success, and strengthening the automotive roadmap.
Read more at PR Newswire
Q.ANT Raises €62 Million to Transform the Future of Computing with Photonic Processing /Q.ANT/
EIFO and the Novo Nordisk Foundation invest €80 million in the establishment of a new Nordic quantum initiative, QuNorth /PR Newswire/
Celera Semiconductor Announces $20 Million Series A Equity Investment from Maverick Silicon to Revolutionize Analog Chip Market Through AI-Driven Automation /PR Newswire/
SixSense, a Singapore-based artificial intelligence (AI) firm for semiconductor manufacturing, has announced a new round of funding led by Peak XV’s Surge /TechNode/
🇺🇸 Lyric Raises $43.5M Series B to Transform Supply Chain Decision Making with AI
Lyric, a leading AI-powered platform transforming supply chain decision making, announced it has raised $43.5 million in Series B funding. The round was led by global software investor Insight Partners, with participation from Primary Venture Partners, Permanent Capital Ventures, VMG Partners, PSP Growth and NewBuild Venture Capital.
The new capital will accelerate Lyric's product roadmap, expand its library of reusable supply chain logic, and deepen its AI-driven capabilities for experimentation, simulation, and automation. The company will also invest in customer success, onboarding, and community programs as it scales platform access for global supply chain teams.
Read more at PR Newswire
Derrick Muilenburg of Lineage on Supply Chain Design with Optilogic /YouTube/
Ecomm CEOs: What's the best demand forecasting tech out there? How's it work? /Ryan Petersen on X/
🇺🇸 OpenMind Secures $20M to Connect All Thinking Machines
OpenMind, a company unlocking machine agency at scale, announced it has closed a $20M funding round led by Pantera Capital. By building open systems, shared intelligence, and decentralized coordination, their goal is to connect all thinking machines. The company also received strong backing from industry leaders Ribbit, Coinbase Ventures, HSG, DCG, Pebblebed, Topology, Primitive Ventures, Lightspeed Faction, Anagram and notable angels.
As other companies race to build humanoid hardware, OpenMind is focused on the missing layer: intelligence infrastructure. The company’s OM1 operating system is hardware-agnostic and designed to support the integration of intelligent machines into everyday life. OpenMind also unveiled FABRIC - a new protocol that gives intelligent machines a way to verify identity, share context, and coordinate securely across environments. As more robots come online, FABRIC provides the trust layer that lets them work together - no matter who built them or where they operate. Robots using FABRIC can understand where they are, who’s nearby and what to do next.
Read more at OpenMind
FORT Robotics Secures Additional $18.9 Million in Series B to accelerate FORT's goal of empowering machine builders and users with safe, secure, and dynamic control, particularly as autonomous systems become increasingly prevalent across global work sites. /PR Newswire/
Terafac Raises ₹6.5 Cr Pre-Seed to Revolutionize Manufacturing with AI-Robotics /TimesTech/
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