When experienced maintenance professionals retire, they take more than years of service with them. They may also take knowledge that has never been written down. AI promises a new way to capture that expertise, but it raises an uncomfortable question: if machines increasingly provide the answers, how will the next generation learn to find them?

Factory-floor teams are adopting industrial artificial intelligence faster than executive leadership is building the data, safety and governance structures needed to scale it, according to IFS’s Industrial Index 2026.

“Many carbon capture and removal projects face similar challenges as they move from concept to reality.”

Mitsubishi Electric and VTT are now taking a step forward by advancing Direct Ocean Capture (DOC) technology from early-stage development toward pilot-scale validation.

Maintenance know-how is leaving factories faster than it is being written down. The problem is not only fixing the fault; it is keeping what the team learned while fixing it.