Digital transformation is bringing autonomous robots, software-defined processes, and first-principles design to the factory floor.
Experts at TDK Ventures’100X 2025 event in San Francisco explored how these technological and strategic shifts are enabling flexible, efficient, and intelligent production facilities.
Panelists discuss the rise of software-driven manufacturing, which is making production more responsive, flexible, and intelligent.
They agreed that rigid production lines, linear assembly, and hardwired equipment will not work as the world moves toward more specialized and adaptive manufacturing.
The factory of the future will operate under new models that incorporate speed, responsiveness, and customization. While this will influence how production facilities are designed and configured, the most transformative change in modern manufacturing may not be on the floor, but in the code that coordinates it.
Charly Mwangi spent 17 years as an engineering executive in the automotive industry.
“As we investigated levers to accelerate the manufacturing processes [at Tesla], building the manufacturing systems, we found a lot of the answers in software,” he said. “Building a ground-up team to do manufacturing engineering at Rivian, more than 25% of the team was software engineers.”
Mwangi, now a partner at Eclipse Capital, a venture capital firm that backs founders building at the intersection of technology and physical industries, outlined three aspects of software-defined manufacturing:
From design to prototype: “That is going through the [design-for-manufacturing] process and loops of design, which are typically long. That whole process will be digitized and automated. Building the manufacturing system: Mwangi compared building the manufacturing machines that will build the output machines to personal printers. “Twenty years ago, it was an ordeal to get them to speak to your computer; today, we don’t even have to think about it. The future is that manufacturing systems will become plug-and-play, just like when you connect a printer.” Operational workflow: “Anything that moves will be autonomized. Factories are just distributed robotics systems.
Satyandra (SK) Gupta , the Smith International professor of engineering at the University of Southern California and co-founder and chief scientist at GrayMatter Robotics, said software-driven manufacturing and automation will help manufacturers become nimbler, a key consideration when technology can emerge overnight, rendering business models and products obsolete.
“The market changes very frequently, so we’ll…have to very quickly set up a factory and then be able to relocate it or reconfigure it to do different things,” he explained. “Environmental considerations are also there, so we have to make sure to be extremely efficient from an energy perspective.”
Peter Cousins , the third member of the panel, is chief operating officer at Verdagy , which opened the first gigawatt-scale electrolyzer factory in the U.S., and said that automation and related technologies will make factories not only flexible, but also simpler. It will enable “consolidation of processes, reduction of waste, and [easier access to] domestic content. Given the way trends are working in the market, people are looking for nearer sources of materials.”
Verdagy’s gigafactory offers a case study. Cousins reported that fabrication shops typically build electrolyzer cell components from components originating from all around the world. Verdagy decided it could reduce the number of manufacturing nodes by partnering with a company to provide nickel coils.
“We came to the conclusion that [this is] the right point in the value chain to start our factory,” Cousins explained. “The electrolyzer cell is 100% nickel, so…that became our input. From that point, inside these four walls, we need to make sure that we can produce our product without a very complex supply chain.”
The next step was to “choose manufacturing processes that have already been proven and scaled and are appropriate for what we’re doing,” he said. “Air conditioning ducting does metal forming; let’s choose high-volume tools from that industry. That got rid of the process complexity, and we ended up with three manufacturing lines that are all high-precision, highly customized, and in the simplest form we could get.”
He said the manufacturing plan allowed for a factory that could fit into a warehouse, “so we didn’t have to do a bunch of construction work. We brought in skilled equipment suppliers to rapidly get our manufacturing up and running.”
As a result, electrolyzer cell production commenced a mere 77 days after move-in.
He said the company recognized the value of integrating software platforms on the fly.
“That’s for flexibility but also for end-to-end thinking and problem solving,” he noted. “In manufacturing, it’s important to have quality control over every process, but you also need quality feedback from downstream.”
Process simplification and constructability were lessons even the great Elon Musk had trouble grasping in Tesla’s early days, Mwangi said.
“Elon was famous for not paying attention to manufacturing,” he recalled. “When we were beginning Model X…he told us our goal was to figure out what we needed to do but not to give him feedback on manufacturability. It was probably one of the most difficult vehicles; it almost brought the company to its knees.”
Musk learned his lesson before Model 3 went into production, Mwangi reported.
“I was leading the team responsible for the design of the body and all the manufacturing engineering,” he said. “We were challenged by Elon to rethink every aspect of manufacturing from our first principles. The only [acceptable] answer for why we’re doing something was ‘physics.’”
He said this led to the company exploring parts consolidation.
“We found out if you’re building a table with 100 parts and I’m building one with 1,000 parts, I will never be able to compete with you,” he illustrated. ”The method you choose for part consolidation also has to be the one with the shortest value chain from raw material to finished goods. This is what led to large casting, which has become commonplace in automotive. You can apply the same principle to multiple other areas.”
Along with large casting, “Additive manufacturing is the future,” Mwangi asserted. “The best piece is one piece.”
While his team at Tesla recognized that this approach would work best for vehicle bodies that were then composed of hundreds of parts, additive manufacturing technology was not as sophisticated as it is today.
“A couple of companies have made a lot of headway, getting mechanical properties that are on par with traditional manufacturing methods and doing it in a robust way,” he said.
“They have [demonstrated] the ability to scale from a performance perspective. That was less to do with the technology than the software that precedes the machinery so you can use it efficiently.”
Challenges remain, but Mwangi sees “materials, software, and the technology stack becoming cheaper and more performative.”
Gupta agreed that “The optics and laser challenges can be solved technologically, [but] the challenge is that the power is so expensive that it’s difficult to make a case that for a really large part, you would produce it in powder-bed fusion. If you’re trying to create a really large part, the more layers you do, the more area you cover, the greater the risk becomes that you will introduce some defect somewhere.”
Renewable energy can help mitigate the challenge, Cousins said.
“Energy consumption is ever-increasing, but solar has gotten to the point where it’s the cheapest form of energy to scale,” he noted. “We’re focused on the same thing as hard-to-abate industries. We’re using hydrogen to unlock fossil parity so we can see the same effect in energy availability for industries that can’t electrify but still need the benefits of reduced energy costs.”
In Part 2 of this insight article, “The Rebirth of the Factory: Talent, AI, Investment, and Sustainability,” we explore participants’ views on aggressive investment, an expanded focus on sustainable manufacturing, and technological breakthroughs that create a more agile, resilient, and intelligent production ecosystem.
About 100X 2025
TDK Ventures' 100X 2025 combines three premier events—Energy Week, Digital Transformation Week, and Portfolio Summit—sponsored by the venture capital arm of TDK Corp., the global electronics giant. The event brought together innovators, investors, researchers, and thought leaders to explore digital and energy transformation in accordance with TDK Ventures’ mission to catalyze iconic companies in materials science, renewable energy, transportation, industry, and AI through early-stage investing, providing startups with technical expertise, global market access, and resources to scale rapidly. The event showcased visionary entrepreneurs working to create a more sustainable, just, and peaceful planet.
For more updates on our events and CVC insights, follow TDK Ventures on LinkedIn .
