The Future of Industrial Innovation: Leveraging AI, Digital Twins, and IIoT to Transform Industries
In April 2025, the Open Institute of Technology (OPIT) invited Professor Andrea Gozzi, Head of Strategy at Partnership for the Digital Industries Ecosystem at Siemens, Italy, to talk about how new technologies are transforming industry.
Industry Is Driving Technological Innovation
According to Gozzi, who teaches in the OPIT BSc in Digital Business and MSc in Digital Business and Innovation programs, many of the young people he meets imagine that the development of technology like artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) is being led by digital companies like Amazon and Apple. But, he adds, they haven’t really considered how industry is utilizing and leading in these fields.
Industry includes markets such as energy, aviation, and manufacturing. Gozzi explains how new technologies are transforming these industries and, in turn, how these industries are pioneering new technologies. As a result, industry represents a growing job market, especially for OPIT graduates.
Challenges to Industry
Gozzi started his discussion by explaining the modern challenges facing the industry today and how these challenges necessitate innovation. He identified three principal challenges:
- Geopolitical instability events like the war in Ukraine and changing tariffs are undermining supply lines, complicating contracts, and making sales unpredictable.
- Labor shortages are being caused by changing demographics and changing culture. Gozzi explained that in the past, people worked for one company for their entire lives, learning specialist skills and adding value throughout their working lives. Today, people tend to change jobs several times throughout their working lives, so to maximize their value, they need to be brought up to speed quicker, and companies need strategies to retain knowledge despite labor churn.
- Sustainability pressures are on the rise both in terms of meeting green regulations and ensuring that expensive factories provide a long-term return on investment.
To adapt to these challenges, industry is looking to develop innovative technological solutions.
Opportunities: AI, Digital Twins, Industrial IoT, and Robotics
Having set the scene, Gozzi dove into the types of technologies that industry is pioneering to adapt to challenge, and how they are pushing these technologies beyond their mainstream potential.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Gozzi explained how AI promises to be an industry game changer, especially in the quest to go from automated to adaptive manufacturing. Automated manufacturing can create products based on existing programming, recreating the same product perfectly every time while eliminating human error.
But the goal is to create machines that don’t just create one thing but can create anything, adapting as designs change. Adaptive manufacturing is one of the core goals of Industry 4.0, which is the next Industrial Revolution that is seeing automated, interconnected factories. Gozzi shared a compelling example of applications by Rolls-Royce for airplane engine production.
AI powers machines to handle more complex tasks independently, which requires them to be networked and connected. As a result, factories can collect data from every area and use it to optimize supply chains and resource allocation. This enables predictive maintenance, reducing downtime by around 50%, and scheduling activity, reducing yield losses by around 40%. Since factories represent major investments, maximizing productivity is essential to achieving a strong return on investment (ROI).
This same data is increasingly being used to iterate and test prototypes in the digital twin environment.
Digital Twins
According to Gozzi, today’s factories are created with intelligent interconnected machines that are adaptable and extendable and can provide strategic insights. The entire manufacturing system is connected by silent threads of information that can turn siloed data into a much larger picture.
These threads form the neural network of digital twins, which are virtual replicas of physical systems that can be used to monitor and optimize operations, simulate actions before execution, and accelerate innovation. New production techniques and designs can be tested virtually before being tested in the real world, allowing processes to be optimized for quality and efficiency. Here, Gozzi shared a compelling example from Siemens’ accelerator ecosystem which creates replicas of factories in the metaverse.
IIoT and Robotics
In the factories themselves, manufacturers rely on advanced robotics connected by the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to carry out tasks independently. IIoT ensures that a centralized intelligence integrates every element of production in real-time. This not only allows robots to do their jobs but also ensures that issues can be identified and solutions executed through the digital twin. The digital twin can also be used to teach robots new tasks tested and piloted virtually in the digital twin.
Meanwhile, robots must be mobile, AI-driven, and integrated into the factory’s ecosystem. It is AI that has enabled robots to become aware of their environment, enabling new behaviors such as picking pieces from a non-uniform set and placing them where they are required. This may seem small, but it is something that robots have never been able to do and represents one of the biggest recent breakthroughs in manufacturing.
AI is also enabling robots to safely work alongside human workers in manufacturing settings. These collaborative robots, called “cobots,” are another recent development that promises to be transformative.
Cybersecurity
Gozzi explained that all this requires advanced connectivity and a closed network with a “zero trust” architecture to mitigate security threats. Hackers, viruses, and other network failures don’t just represent the potential loss of valuable and confidential data, but also a major safety risk if cobots are interfered with and begin to act unsafely.
Powerful and secure industrial closed networks are being enabled by 5G, but these networks still need to be monitored by cybersecurity continuously in real-time.
The Future of Industry
Industry is modernizing quickly, and technology is playing an increasingly important role. This is manifesting in the development of smart adaptive factories using a mix of AI, advanced robotics, and digital twins. Industrial IoT, strong connected networks, and advanced cybersecurity support this. The demand for talent that understands these technologies and their applications will only increase in the coming years.
Moreover, Gozzi reassures students that there is no question that technology will replace real people in some positions. Humans will still be needed to collaborate and work side by side with robots. This will require people to learn new skills, in particular, a data-driven mindset and approach to problem-solving.
Both OPIT’s BSc in Digital Business and MSc in Digital Business and Innovation are designed to prepare students for these kinds of careers.
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From the same author
Read the articleSource:
- Times of Malta, published on September 18th, 2025
4 min read
The gathering brought together academics and technology leaders from prominent European Institutions, such as Instituto de Empresa (IE University), OPIT itself and the Royal College of Arts, to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the university experience.
The OPIT AI Copilot has been trained on the institute’s complete academic archive, a collection created over the past three years that includes 131 courses, more than 3,500 hours of recorded lectures, 7,500 study resources, 320 certified assessments, and thousands of exercises and original learning documents.
Unlike generic AI tools, the Copilot is deeply integrated with OPIT’s learning management system, allowing it to track each student’s progress and provide tailored support.
This integration means the assistant can reference relevant sources within the learning environment, adapt to the student’s stage of study, and ensure that unreleased course content remains inaccessible.
A mobile app is also scheduled for release this autumn, that will allow students to download exercise and access other tools.
During examinations, the Copilot automatically switches to what the institute calls an “anti-cheating mode”, restricting itself to general research support rather than providing direct answers.
For OPIT’s international community of 500 students from nearly 100 countries, many of whom balance studies with full-time work, the ability to access personalised assistance at any time of day is a key advantage.
“Eighty-five per cent of students are already using large language models in some way to study,” said OPIT founder and director Riccardo Ocleppo. “We wanted to go further by creating a solution tailored to our own community, reflecting the real experiences of remote learners and working professionals.”
Tool aims to cut correction time by 30%
The Copilot will also reduce administrative burdens for faculty. It can help grade assignments, generate new educational materials, and create rubrics that allow teachers to cut correction time by as much as 30 per cent.
According to OPIT, this will free up staff to dedicate more time to teaching and direct student engagement.
At the Milan event, Rector Francesco Profumo underlined the broader implications of AI in higher education. “We are in the midst of a deep transformation, where AI is no longer just a tool: it is an environment that radically changes how we learn, teach, and create,” he said.
“But it is not a shortcut. It is a cultural, ethical, and pedagogical challenge, and to meet it we must have the courage to rethink traditional models and build bridges between human and artificial intelligence.”
OPIT was joined on stage by representatives from other leading institutions, including Danielle Barrios O’Neill of the Royal College of Art, who spoke about the role of AI in art and creativity, and Francisco Machin of IE University, who discussed applications in business and management education.
OPIT student Asya Mantovani, also employed at a leading technology and consulting firm in Italy, gave a first-hand account of balancing professional life with online study.
The assistant has been in development for the past eight months, involving a team of OPIT professors, researchers, and engineers.
Ocleppo stressed that OPIT intends to make its AI innovations available beyond its own institution. “We want to put technology at the service of higher education,” he said.
“Our goal is to develop solutions not only for our own students, but also to share with global institutions eager to innovate the learning experience in a future that is approaching very quickly.”
Read the articleFrom personalization to productivity: AI at the heart of the educational experience.
Click this link to read and download the e-book.
At its core, teaching is a simple endeavour. The experienced and learned pass on their knowledge and wisdom to new generations. Nothing has changed in that regard. What has changed is how new technologies emerge to facilitate that passing on of knowledge. The printing press, computers, the internet – all have transformed how educators teach and how students learn.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the next game-changer in the educational space.
Specifically, AI agents have emerged as tools that utilize all of AI’s core strengths, such as data gathering and analysis, pattern identification, and information condensing. Those strengths have been refined, first into simple chatbots capable of providing answers, and now into agents capable of adapting how they learn and adjusting to the environment in which they’re placed. This adaptability, in particular, makes AI agents vital in the educational realm.
The reasons why are simple. AI agents can collect, analyse, and condense massive amounts of educational material across multiple subject areas. More importantly, they can deliver that information to students while observing how the students engage with the material presented. Those observations open the door for tweaks. An AI agent learns alongside their student. Only, the agent’s learning focuses on how it can adapt its delivery to account for a student’s strengths, weaknesses, interests, and existing knowledge.
Think of an AI agent like having a tutor – one who eschews set lesson plans in favour of an adaptive approach designed and tweaked constantly for each specific student.
In this eBook, the Open Institute of Technology (OPIT) will take you on a journey through the world of AI agents as they pertain to education. You will learn what these agents are, how they work, and what they’re capable of achieving in the educational sector. We also explore best practices and key approaches, focusing on how educators can use AI agents to the benefit of their students. Finally, we will discuss other AI tools that both complement and enhance an AI agent’s capabilities, ensuring you deliver the best possible educational experience to your students.
-
Go to all authors
Related posts
Source:
- Times of Malta, published on September 18th, 2025
4 min read
The gathering brought together academics and technology leaders from prominent European Institutions, such as Instituto de Empresa (IE University), OPIT itself and the Royal College of Arts, to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the university experience.
The OPIT AI Copilot has been trained on the institute’s complete academic archive, a collection created over the past three years that includes 131 courses, more than 3,500 hours of recorded lectures, 7,500 study resources, 320 certified assessments, and thousands of exercises and original learning documents.
Unlike generic AI tools, the Copilot is deeply integrated with OPIT’s learning management system, allowing it to track each student’s progress and provide tailored support.
This integration means the assistant can reference relevant sources within the learning environment, adapt to the student’s stage of study, and ensure that unreleased course content remains inaccessible.
A mobile app is also scheduled for release this autumn, that will allow students to download exercise and access other tools.
During examinations, the Copilot automatically switches to what the institute calls an “anti-cheating mode”, restricting itself to general research support rather than providing direct answers.
For OPIT’s international community of 500 students from nearly 100 countries, many of whom balance studies with full-time work, the ability to access personalised assistance at any time of day is a key advantage.
“Eighty-five per cent of students are already using large language models in some way to study,” said OPIT founder and director Riccardo Ocleppo. “We wanted to go further by creating a solution tailored to our own community, reflecting the real experiences of remote learners and working professionals.”
Tool aims to cut correction time by 30%
The Copilot will also reduce administrative burdens for faculty. It can help grade assignments, generate new educational materials, and create rubrics that allow teachers to cut correction time by as much as 30 per cent.
According to OPIT, this will free up staff to dedicate more time to teaching and direct student engagement.
At the Milan event, Rector Francesco Profumo underlined the broader implications of AI in higher education. “We are in the midst of a deep transformation, where AI is no longer just a tool: it is an environment that radically changes how we learn, teach, and create,” he said.
“But it is not a shortcut. It is a cultural, ethical, and pedagogical challenge, and to meet it we must have the courage to rethink traditional models and build bridges between human and artificial intelligence.”
OPIT was joined on stage by representatives from other leading institutions, including Danielle Barrios O’Neill of the Royal College of Art, who spoke about the role of AI in art and creativity, and Francisco Machin of IE University, who discussed applications in business and management education.
OPIT student Asya Mantovani, also employed at a leading technology and consulting firm in Italy, gave a first-hand account of balancing professional life with online study.
The assistant has been in development for the past eight months, involving a team of OPIT professors, researchers, and engineers.
Ocleppo stressed that OPIT intends to make its AI innovations available beyond its own institution. “We want to put technology at the service of higher education,” he said.
“Our goal is to develop solutions not only for our own students, but also to share with global institutions eager to innovate the learning experience in a future that is approaching very quickly.”
From personalization to productivity: AI at the heart of the educational experience.
Click this link to read and download the e-book.
At its core, teaching is a simple endeavour. The experienced and learned pass on their knowledge and wisdom to new generations. Nothing has changed in that regard. What has changed is how new technologies emerge to facilitate that passing on of knowledge. The printing press, computers, the internet – all have transformed how educators teach and how students learn.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the next game-changer in the educational space.
Specifically, AI agents have emerged as tools that utilize all of AI’s core strengths, such as data gathering and analysis, pattern identification, and information condensing. Those strengths have been refined, first into simple chatbots capable of providing answers, and now into agents capable of adapting how they learn and adjusting to the environment in which they’re placed. This adaptability, in particular, makes AI agents vital in the educational realm.
The reasons why are simple. AI agents can collect, analyse, and condense massive amounts of educational material across multiple subject areas. More importantly, they can deliver that information to students while observing how the students engage with the material presented. Those observations open the door for tweaks. An AI agent learns alongside their student. Only, the agent’s learning focuses on how it can adapt its delivery to account for a student’s strengths, weaknesses, interests, and existing knowledge.
Think of an AI agent like having a tutor – one who eschews set lesson plans in favour of an adaptive approach designed and tweaked constantly for each specific student.
In this eBook, the Open Institute of Technology (OPIT) will take you on a journey through the world of AI agents as they pertain to education. You will learn what these agents are, how they work, and what they’re capable of achieving in the educational sector. We also explore best practices and key approaches, focusing on how educators can use AI agents to the benefit of their students. Finally, we will discuss other AI tools that both complement and enhance an AI agent’s capabilities, ensuring you deliver the best possible educational experience to your students.
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