In this insightful episode of Factory Forward, Kevin Wood—Cisco’s Chief Industrial IoT Architect—dives deep into the foundational role of secure and scalable infrastructure in the future of smart manufacturing. With over two decades of experience designing enterprise and industrial networks, Kevin shares hard-earned lessons and practical frameworks for driving meaningful industrial IoT (IIoT) transformation. From his early work at Volvo to leading global strategy at Cisco, Kevin offers a compelling look at how manufacturers can move from pilots and POCs to full-scale, future-ready IIoT deployments.
Whether you’re a mid-career engineer, plant leader, or a tech-savvy innovator, this episode delivers valuable guidance on bridging the gap between IT and OT, translating technical complexity for business impact, and leading with strategy in industrial environments. Kevin’s emphasis on infrastructure, cybersecurity, data prioritization, and human-centric Industry 5.0 makes this conversation a must-listen for anyone involved in digital manufacturing.
Key Takeaways:
Tune in to discover what it takes to build intelligent, agile, and secure manufacturing systems—and how putting people back at the center can unlock the next wave of industrial innovation.
Brandin and his team help our customers with setting up the Pathfinder platform and getting up-to-speed on all the features and functionalities, in addition to assisting them with standardizing their processes where needed.
Brandin is a seasoned manufacturing leader, who has spent more than a decade designing and setting up assembly lines in both the US and China, optimizing them, and working with human operators to maximize productivity and quality.
Jesse works closely with our marquis customers to understand their needs, and figures out the best solution that immediately adds dollars to their bottom line.
Jesse has two decades of enterprise sales experience. He has held sales leadership roles at pioneering technology startups.
Andrey takes inventions and converts them into innovations. He leads our product engineering team to turn our scientific prototypes into robust customer-facing products.
Andrey co-founded and successfully exited a startup to immigrate to the US. He spent his next eight years building the core data science infrastructure for Amazon’s supply chain planning team, and the CV/ML infrastructure for Microsoft’s HoloLens organization.
Zeeshan focuses on delighting our customers by understanding their needs and defining product and strategy to meet and exceed these needs. He works closely with our sales leadership to grow our customer base.
Zeeshan was a scientific leader at Microsoft’s HoloLens division, where he invented AI technologies to assist frontline workers across industries. Earlier, he shipped IoT platforms and visual defect detection software for manufacturers at Siemens and MVTec GmbH.
Huy takes our product roadmap and figures out what’s achievable with today’s AI advances, and what we need to invent to solve our customers’ pain points.
Huy led teams of scientists and engineers at NEC and invented technologies for driver assistance systems that are part of 500,000+ Honda cars. He is an inventor on more than 20 US patents, and his research papers are cited by every lab from MIT, Stanford, and CMU to Apple, Google, and Baidu.
