June 4, 2026

In a recent episode of The Industry 4.0 Podcast with Grantek, host Matt Susi sat down with Andrew Waycott, President and Co-Founder of TwinThread, to talk about one of the most pressing questions in manufacturing today: how do you actually operationalize Industrial AI?

Waycott has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of manufacturing and technology, and his answer is grounded in a simple but powerful premise. “Most engineers in manufacturing shouldn’t have to become data scientists to solve industrial problems,” he said. “TwinThread is about giving them AI-powered tools they can actually use.”

That philosophy is at the core of what TwinThread has built: a platform that covers data ingestion, contextualization, AI analytics, and closed-loop optimization, all without requiring a massive IT overhaul. For North American manufacturers already managing tight margins and aging infrastructure, that kind of practical entry point matters.

One of the most compelling examples Waycott shared was TwinThread’s deployment with Hill’s Pet Food, a Colgate company, across 18 global production lines. The challenge was familiar to anyone in food manufacturing: controlling moisture, fat, and protein levels consistently across high-volume production, where manual adjustments introduce variability and sampling-based quality checks often catch problems too late. TwinThread’s Perfect Quality AI module predicts final product quality in real time and automatically optimizes setpoints at the start of the line. “We implemented a fully closed-loop, AI-powered quality control system,” Waycott noted, “probably the first of its kind in the food industry.”

The conversation also tackled one of the most persistent barriers to AI adoption: the gap between a promising pilot and a scaled solution. Waycott was candid about what holds manufacturers back. Without IT and OT teams working in alignment, without executive sponsorship, and without a baseline level of automation maturity, AI projects tend to stall. “Nine years ago, getting buy-in for AI in manufacturing was nearly impossible,” he said. “Today, leadership teams actively want AI solutions, but they need a clear roadmap to operationalize them.”

That roadmap is exactly what Grantek and TwinThread are building together. Through a recently announced strategic partnership, the two companies are combining Grantek’s decades of integration expertise with TwinThread’s Industrial AI platform to bring real, scalable outcomes to manufacturers across North America.

Listen to the full conversation with Andrew Waycott on The Industry 4.0 Podcast with Grantek, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.