November 16, 2025

Here's How to Actually Scale Industrial AI Pilots

It's not uncommon for manufacturers to run years of innovation pilots. Each using different technologies and solving different problems, often in silos.

However, for real digital impact, some pilots need to go global, which means scaling.

And not everything from the pilot phase can make that leap.

๐‡๐ž๐ซ๐žโ€™๐ฌ ๐š ๐ฉ๐ซ๐จ๐œ๐ž๐ฌ๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐š๐ญ ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ ๐œ๐š๐ง ๐Ÿ๐จ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐จ๐ฐ

Gather all the pilots and innovations into one place:
โ‡จ Group by technology, business problem, and data flow
โ‡จ Evaluate each based on scalability and business value
โ‡จ Create a "tool + standard" bundle that could address the majority (~75%) of use cases

Projects that can't scale arenโ€™t discarded, but they are deprioritized. The focus is clear: go big on what could scale now, leave the rest for later.

๐“๐ก๐ž ๐‘๐ž๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ญ?

โ€
A clear, standardized approach that enables global deployment across the business, turning isolated wins into repeatable, scalable value.

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Kudzai Manditereza

Founder & Educator - Industry40.tv

Kudzai Manditereza is an Industry4.0 technology evangelist and creator of Industry40.tv, an independent media and education platform focused on industrial data and AI for smart manufacturing. He specializes in Industrial AI, IIoT, Unified Namespace, Digital Twins, and Industrial DataOps, helping digital manufacturing leaders implement and scale AI initiatives.

Kudzai hosts the AI in Manufacturing podcast and writes the Smart Factory Playbook newsletter, where he shares practical guidance on building the data backbone that makes industrial AI work in real-world manufacturing environments. He currently serves as Senior Industry Solutions Advocate at HiveMQ.