The Bottleneck isn’t People, it’s Architecture

Most factories aren’t short on intelligence: they’re short on connected context. We’ve locked knowledge inside monolithic systems and rigid schemas; the work on the floor changes faster than those systems can.

A shop‑floor vignette

Night shift, final assembly. An operator sees a scrap spike and opens three tools: MES for the traveler, historian for the tag trends, SharePoint for the most recent SOP revision. Maintenance logs sit in email. By the time the picture forms, the shift is over. Everyone did their job; the architecture didn’t.

Why MES is struggling (without throwing it away)

MES assumed stable, homogeneous lines. Today is heterogeneous equipment, site‑specific conventions, frequent SKU and mix changes, and multi‑plant rollouts. Forcing every improvement through one “big model” means brittle integrations and long delays. The result: pilot‑hell; lighthouse sites that don’t scale; shadow processes that live in spreadsheets because change is too expensive.

The brownfield imperative

You can’t pause a plant to redesign its data. Every site, cell, and PLC stack is different, and that diversity is not a bug: it’s the accumulated wisdom of how each factory wins. Architecture must adapt to brownfield reality, not the other way around. That requires context first: mapping assets, processes, materials, and documents into a live graph that reflects this line now.

What changes when architecture changes

Context follows the work. Operators see the situation (recent scrap on this cell, last maintenance action, current process window drift) next to the traveler. Quality leads open an investigation view that assembles lot history and proposes likely causes based on similar events across plants. Engineers compose and deploy a targeted check to one station, with approvals and rollback, then replicate it safely when it proves out. MES participates, but it’s no longer the operating system.

Why does this even matter?

Speed without chaos. Governance becomes guardrails: lineage, access, approvals - embedded in the flow, not gates that stall it. Standards still emerge, but as an outcome of usage and value rather than a prerequisite for action.

The challenge

The challenge is real: heterogeneous plants, legacy systems, constant change. The upside is bigger: teams that go context‑first now will move faster, learn faster, and outperform the market. Start on one line: connect, map, and ship two small apps - then scale what works. Next, we’ll unpack the stack that makes this practical in brownfield reality.

About Marc Krüger-Sprengel

Marc Krüger-Sprengel is the Co-Founder and CEO of context/fab, where he and the team are building the context layer that helps manufacturers use AI at scale across entire production networks. Before founding context/fab, Marc led Data & AI at Bosch Rexroth - building up platforms, teams and ecosystems that made Data and AI impactful for operations, quality and planning. With roots in mechanical engineering and experience across manufacturing, automotive, aviation, space and medtech, he focuses on results over slideware: unify OT and IT, turn it into context, and deliver results that move KPIs.