Manufacturing Matters Podcast

This episode of Manufacturing Matters features Winn Hardin in conversation with Denise Chludzinski, vice president of business development at Miller Resource Group, a leading recruiter specializing in food and industrial automation manufacturing sectors. They discuss current talent trends, labor market challenges, and growth opportunities in manufacturing for 2026.

Link to the full episode in the comments

"Engineers can now start thinking about cell design not from the cages, but from the actual work."

A significant if not obvious factor that all companies implementing robotic systems must consider is safety. While robotic guarding has been the industry standard for years, Sensory Robotics COO Mark Gagas believes another way offers more flexibility and space for manufacturers. After 19 months of rigorous testing, his company now has UL certification to prove it.

In this episode of Manufacturing Matters, TECH B2B Marketing's Jimmy Carroll sits down with Gagas to discuss how Sensory Robotics' SR-1 system uses 3D vision to provide 100% human detection coverage, replace hard guarding with an intelligent, monitored space around the robot — allowing workers and machines to operate together naturally, at full speed and full payload.

The conversation covers what the newly achieved certification means for customers and the broader market, how advances in 3D time-of-flight sensing and edge computing made a system like SR-1 possible, and why fenceless factory design could unlock significant gains in floor space and productivity.

Gagas also walks through the company’s expanding product line, including a DoD-funded mobile platform, SR-2— which embeds safety directly into the arm — and SR Insight, a data layer that adds productivity dashboards, human ergonomics analysis, and live risk assessment monitoring on top of the core safety infrastructure.

Artificial intelligence is quickly making its way onto the manufacturing floor. But when it comes to safety, the stakes are different. In this episode of Manufacturing Matters, Winn Hardin and Aaron Hand talk with Erik Reynolds, founder of Reynolds & Moore, about what it really takes to bring AI into safety-critical systems.

For decades, safety engineering has relied on deterministic, fully explainable systems. AI challenges that foundation, introducing models that learn, adapt, and sometimes behave in ways we don’t fully understand. So why use AI at all? Reynolds explains where it actually adds value — from enabling smarter human-robot collaboration to the possibility of systems that improve safety over time, not degrade. But with that potential comes a new challenge: proving that these systems can be trusted.

👇Full episode at the link in the comments.