Hi Good Morning [FIRST_NAME], The manufacturing skills gap isn’t a forecast. It is already limiting productivity on the factory floor for leading OEMs. In this issue of Automation Companion, we take an honest look at a problem the industry can’t even agree how to measure, let alone solve. How can AI enable product design? And where is the figurative line in the sand? John Kraus, VP of operations at Jabil, pulls no punches in our Q&A: the workforce shortage was an industry self-own decades in the making, and now they must try new strategies to fix it. Bill Lydon traces the longer, underappreciated history of no-code tools on the factory floor — from ladder logic to cobots — and makes a credible case that the programming skills gap may be closing from a direction nobody expected. A new infographic lays out concrete steps engineers and team leads can take right now. Explore the September 2026 issue of Automation Companion.
