Watch: Gestamp North America's Mohan Swaminathan on AI-ready manufacturing

Gestamp is taking a phased approach to shopfloor digitalisation, establishing connected processes and a common operating platform as the foundation for more advanced smart manufacturing and AI applications.

A speaker at Automotive Manufacturing North America, Mohan Swaminathan, Operations Director – US Region at Gestamp North America, explains in this one-on-one interview how the company’s Ges-Fusion platform is helping address fragmentation across manufacturing operations by bringing equipment, people, systems and processes together.

The initiative forms part of a ten-year digitalisation journey, built around three key stages: standardising processes, digitising them and ultimately connecting them through an integrated operating system.

Swaminathan emphasises that establishing this foundation is essential before businesses can fully realise the potential of AI. Gestamp's federated, collaborative approach, which draws on solutions developed across its global operations, has also helped accelerate implementation, improve adoption and support workforce upskilling and reskilling.

With its connected manufacturing platform in place, Gestamp is now exploring further AI-driven opportunities. These include machine vision, predictive maintenance, humanoid robotics and collaborative robots, alongside the wider deployment of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs).

A central objective is to simplify shopfloor operations by reducing manual, repetitive tasks and supporting employees through increasingly automated manufacturing environments.

Looking ahead, Swaminathan identifies adoption as one of the industry's biggest challenges over the next five to ten years. As technologies evolve rapidly, manufacturers must ensure their workforces have the skills to keep pace, while maintaining consistent standards and processes that can support global scalability.

His message is clear: successful smart manufacturing is not simply about introducing new technologies. It starts with connected foundations, standardised processes and people equipped to make the most of them.