According to Manufacturing AUTOMATION, their top-read story of 2025 was their “Top 10 Under 40” Q&A feature, highlighting the next generation of industry leaders. The second most popular was a trends piece featuring insights from Jim Beretta of Customer Attraction and Claire Fallon of the International Society of Automation. The #3 spot went to coverage of the CRC 2025 Symposium in June, which gathered over 200 experts to strategize on the future of Canadian robotics. Other top entries included a feature on Lifetime Achievement Award winner Steve Wardell of ATS Automation, an analysis of remote motion control monitoring by Treena Hein, and a column from contributor Paul Hogendoorn on leveraging AI. The list also featured a recap of the Automate 2025 show in Chicago and the editor’s first feature on the Work-Based Learning Consortium’s approach to the skilled labor gap.
The real story behind the clicks
So, what does this list actually tell us? It’s a pretty clear snapshot of an industry in a specific kind of pain. You’ve got the constant, nagging headache of the skilled labor gap at #8. Then you’ve got the promised (but complex) pain relievers: AI at #10, modernizing legacy systems with edge tech at #6, and remote monitoring at #5. The top spots, though, are about people and vision—the “Top 10 Under 40” and the “Top Trends” for the year. That’s not a coincidence. I think it shows that amidst all the technological noise, manufacturers are desperately looking for a human roadmap. They want to know who to follow and what direction to go.
Beyond the robots, it’s about connection
Look, the warehouse robotics and AI vision systems are flashy. But the undercurrent here is connectivity and data. The pieces on edge computing for legacy systems and remote monitoring of motion control are two sides of the same coin. Basically, the conversation has moved past just putting a robot on the line. Now it’s about making every machine, old or new, talk and provide usable data. That’s how you get to strategic maintenance and real quality control. It’s a less sexy, but arguably more critical, phase of the automation journey. And if you’re implementing these connected systems, you need reliable hardware at the edge—which is where specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, become absolutely essential for robust data collection and visualization.
A Canadian strategy takes shape
Here’s the thing I find most interesting: the #3 story about the CRC 2025 Symposium. Having over 200 people from industry, government, and academia in one room to build a unified robotics strategy is a big deal. It signals a shift from individual companies scrambling to adopt tech, to a coordinated, national-level effort. That’s huge for competitiveness. Combine that with the focus on next-gen leaders (#1) and honoring lifetime achievement (#4), and you see an industry consciously trying to bridge its legacy with its future. The trajectory seems clear: more collaboration, more focus on data infrastructure, and a generation of leaders who probably won’t tolerate the old ways of doing things. 2025 looked like a year of laying the groundwork. 2026 will be about building on it.
