November 4, 2025

How Composable Industrial Digital Systems Unlock Agility

Most manufacturers still build their digital systems the old way. You walk into a plant, map out every process, lock down a blueprint, and spend months (sometimes years) implementing monolithic systems like MES, QMS, or ERP.

That might work in a world that doesn’t change. But we don’t live in that world anymore.

We live in a world where what works today might be obsolete tomorrow.

Once you lock the blueprint, you’re done.

You’re stuck with a rigid system that’s nearly impossible to adapt, even as your business, your customers, and your environment are constantly changing.

That’s why you need a different approach, one that’s not rigid, but composable.

Composability is a new paradigm built for change.

It doesn’t rely on locking blueprints; it embraces uncertainty.

And its foundational pillar is bottom-up emergence.

That means solving problems iteratively. One at a time.
You don’t design the whole system and freeze it.

Instead, you start small. You learn. You adapt. You build as you go.
It’s agile. It’s resilient.

It gives teams the freedom to solve one problem today, and a different one tomorrow, without breaking the whole system.

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.