What actually happened in industrial AI this week.
For people who run or supply factories and plants. Every item is sourced. No hype, and no press releases passed off as news.
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1,005
articles read this week
12
made the issue
44
glossary terms
84
companies and labs
Latest news
All news →This week's issue
Read the full issue →Week of November 2, 2026 · 12 items · 5 sections
Factory floor
- ORAFOL halves optical inspection times with Zebra machine vision software
- AutoScheduler.AI cuts P&G warehouse planning from eight hours to 20 minutes
- Lear to open automated Michigan factory as blueprint for its global network
- ISO 21423:2026 sets common communication rules for mobile robots from different vendors
Robotics
Energy & process industries
Deals & funding
How an issue is made
The full method →- 1
Collect
Every Sunday a script reads 24 trade press feeds and news searches.
- 2
Filter
It keeps the last 7 days and drops duplicates and press-release wires.
- 3
Pick
AI picks 8 to 12 items under 5 fixed headings and writes 2 to 3 plain sentences each.
- 4
Check
A second script blocks the issue if a link is dead, or a number or name isn't in the source.
Previous issues
Archive →Week of October 25, 2026
Agility Robotics now expects to raise about $465 million in its SPAC deal, and Foundry Robotics raised $100 million for an AI-run assembly factory.
Week of October 18, 2026
Arda, a startup from former OpenAI executive Bob McGrew, came out of stealth with a $160M Series A at a $1.5B valuation.
Week of October 11, 2026
South Korea's trade ministry granted a regulatory exemption for live tests of 20 humanoid robots at four sites.
Who owns whom
All 84 companies →Glossary
All 44 terms →Digital twin
A digital twin is a virtual model of a physical asset, process, or system that is kept in sync with its real counterpart through live data.
OEE
OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) is a measure of how effectively a machine or line is used during planned production time.
MES
An MES (manufacturing execution system) is software that manages and records production on the shop floor.
Edge AI
Edge AI is running machine learning models on or near the device that produces the data, such as a camera, gateway, or industrial PC, instead of in a remote cloud.
Predictive maintenance
Predictive maintenance is maintenance triggered by a prediction of failure, based on measured equipment condition such as vibration, temperature, or noise.
Physical AI
Physical AI is AI that perceives, reasons about, and acts in the physical world, typically through robots, vehicles, or machines.