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June 17, 2025Manufacturers Have Had 5 Years to Get FIT — So, Have They?
By Paul J. Galeski, P.E., CAP
GrayMatter Chairman & CEO
Many lessons manufacturers learned during the pandemic have become common practice in just five years’ time.
No one really takes supply chains for granted anymore, do they?
It’s safe to say PPE and air quality controls, once regarded as nice-to-haves, maintained their battlefield promotions to must-haves — when it suits the scenario.
And running skeleton crews while hoping no one calls in sick is, at the very least, frowned upon nowadays, right?
What Drives Flexible Intuitive Technology?
Back in 2020 I introduced a new concept called Flexible Intuitive Technology – or FIT – a mindset manufacturers needed to navigate a rapidly changing world.
FIT was not, and still isn’t, a product or a platform.
It’s a strategic approach to building smarter, more adaptive, and human-aware industrial systems that evolve through continuous feedback and collaboration.
We need to continue the work to align technology, people and processes to meet modern manufacturing challenges like unexpected changes in supply chains, challenges with finding employees to fill open positions and prioritizing safe, clean work environments.
No matter how good technology gets, we still need people.
How to Adopt FIT Thinking
FIT comes from a wake-up call during the pandemic that exposed serious gaps in how manufacturing systems were structured, especially in terms of adaptability, integration and workforce readiness.
It forced us to consider some tough scenarios. In one conversation I had at the time with a colleague, we asked ourselves, “What if everyone called in sick? How would things break down?”
This made us think deeply about the fragility of the labor model, the lack of redundancy in automation systems and allowed to refine some of the major themes (not all of them new or original) behind FIT thinking:
FIT goes beyond traditional automation.
It's not just about efficiency or automation anymore. It's about integrating adaptability, intuition and context-awareness into technology systems.
Shifting from open-loop to closed-thinking is key.
Traditional systems often react after failures occur. Our concept emphasizes systems that learn from events, adapt in real time and prevent future issues.
Take time to define the roles of people & tech.
Successful manufacturing requires a clear understanding of the distinct (yet collaborative) roles of humans, machines, management and digital systems.
Contextual intelligence is key.
Instead of basic alarms, FIT technologies should provide context. For example, it should explain why a valve failed, what led up to it and what could prevent it, empowering operators with deeper insights.
Learn systems that improve with use.
Like Google or Amazon, FIT-enabled systems should evolve based on experience. They should constantly refine their responses and suggestions for both humans and machines.
Prioritize intuitive design.
Flexibility and agility must be clearly understood and defined. FIT emphasizes intuitive systems that not only respond quickly but also learn from those responses to improve.
Integrate IT tools & machine learning.
FIT advocates for the application of advanced analytics, AI and cloud-based tools to extract and utilize real-time insights from manufacturing data.
Planning for the Unexpected
COVID revealed blind spots in labor planning, supply chains and environmental safety.
FIT is about building systems that are ready for unforeseen disruptions. As the saying goes, the army is always built to fight the last war, which was true at the advent of COVID.
Fortunately, manufacturers and the automation industry have the opportunity to actually live the real meaning of future-proofing their operations because we’ve been given a roadmap of extreme experiences that no one needs me to review here.
A great first step is using data to guide decisions. I know it sounds simple, and maybe you think everyone is already doing that, but it isn’t and they’re not. Not really, anyway.
From pumps to power systems, FIT recommends real-time data analysis to prompt smarter preventive actions and collaborative decision-making.
That means shifting from open-loop to closed-loop decision-making.
With an open loop, for example, we see a pump that starts misbehaving. Eventually, the water it moves surges or ebbs beyond its set points, it starts pulling heavy amperages and fails.
We fix it and move on.
With a closed loop, we try to address problems before they occur. But more importantly, when there’s a failure, we analyze the reasons behind it and we feed those discoveries back into the first part of the process that tries to detect and prevent issues at an early stage.
Closing the Loop
So, have manufacturers gotten FIT in the last five years?
They’ve gotten FIT-ter, but there are still a lot of challenges, and the emergence of AI in the form of LLMs has changed the game once again.
Manufacturers are using AI-based tools primarily to “reduce costs and improve operational efficiency,” according to research from the National Association of Manufacturers.
Often that means making it easier for plant-floor operators to query previously hard-to-find data or custom reports.
No, we shouldn’t entrust plant floor operations to ChatGPT, but we should find ways to harness AI to help us close the loop and perform our jobs better by interrogating data, asking the types of well-crafted questions that AI is good at answering.
Then we continue to trust real-life plant-floor operators to make the right decisions.
They’re the ones who showed up to work anyway when many others could just log in five years ago, and they're the ones still showing up today.
We owe it to them, and ourselves, to think about how FIT, or whatever your version of the acronym is, can keep accelerating progress for automation and manufacturing.
Paul J. Galeski, P.E., CAP
GrayMatter Chairman & CEO
GrayMatter CEO Paul Galeski’s vision is to elevate GrayMatter to a new, higher category in the solution provider market — one that offers more implementation capabilities than a typical system integrator along with independent, best-in-class strategic consulting and 24/7 support.
Galeski joined GrayMatter, first as executive chairman and then as CEO, as part of GrayMatter’s strategic partnership with Tailwind Capital in May 2024.
Galeski has been in the industrial technology market for about 40 years.
In 1989, Paul Galeski founded MAGNUM Technologies, a company that quickly gained recognition for its innovation and growth. By 1995, Inc. Magazine named MAGNUM Technologies one of the nation’s fastest-growing companies. Just two years later, in 1997, General Electric acquired MAGNUM Technologies, integrating it as a subsidiary of GE Industrial Systems. Galeski remained at the helm as President until his departure in early 1999.
Later that year, he founded MAVERICK Technologies, immediately making a bold move by acquiring Software Architects, another Inc. 500 company. MAVERICK Technologies expanded its global footprint by forming the Global System Integrators Alliance (GSIA) in partnership with MPE Industrial Automation Europe and MPE Industrial Automation Asia.
This alliance connected over 30 locations and 700 professionals worldwide. By 2011, MAVERICK Technologies employed more than 500 professionals who completed 10,000 projects in 45 countries. Rockwell Automation acquired MAVERICK in 2016.