In its relentless march toward end-to-end automation, technology has continually up-ended the boundaries between man and machine in industrial enterprises. With recent advances in artificial intelligence supported by endless computing resources in the cloud, we must now ask ourselves, “how much longer will we need people directly involved in manufacturing?”

The fact is, we will always have people involved in process manufacturing plants. So perhaps the better approach is to look for ways to create an environment where we are able to balance the best attributes of people and technology to assure optimisation of communication, safety and production. This article will explore new roles within an organisation and how technology, created to support critical human factors, will help people and machines collaborate to provide the breakthrough advances in productivity that society needs in the decades to come.