From firefighting to foresight - the playbook for boosting OEE, cutting scrap, and scaling autonomy by design.AI for Manufacturing Leaders: Out-Cycling with EDGEWhy Literacy + Agility Beat Brute Force Tech Spend - Boost OEE, Reduce Scrap, and Scale AutonomyFactories don't need another robot demo. They need loops that close themselves.If you're a manufacturing executive, you've already lived the gap: multimillion-dollar MES systems, shiny new automation, endless dashboards - and yet downtime spikes, scrap piles up, and customers still get late calls. The brutal truth? Most plants are stuck at AAI 1-2: firefighting, not foresight.This book is your field manual for moving up the ladder. AI for Manufacturing Leaders shows you how to turn literacy into advantage, using frameworks proven across the AI Advantage Series(TM): EDGE gets you moving - Evaluate, Decide, Gain, Execute.LARA makes sure you're moving in the right direction - Leadership, Agility, Resilience, Alignment.CLEAR keeps literacy sticky - Clarity, Level, Examples, Aligned, Replicable.The Output-to-Impact Dashboard(TM) makes every win visible, tying shop-floor outputs (OEE, scrap, twins, operator trust, energy use) to enterprise impact.The Autonomy Advantage Index(TM) (AAI) is your north star - tracking maturity from Reactive → Evolving.And in manufacturing, three DNA strands define how fast you move: TWIN (Digital Twin Readiness): simulate before you cut steel.GEAR (Human-Machine Collaboration): operators and AI meshing, not clashing.GREEN (Sustainability/ESG Lens): energy, emissions, and waste embedded in throughput, not bolted on for PR.Across six parts, you'll baseline your autonomy disadvantage, build literacy without jargon, scale pilots without burning out the plant, install guardrails that don't kill agility, apply sector-specific playbooks, and future-proof your factories with quarterly AAI reviews and a Future Signals Radar.Every chapter ends with a Dashboard Callout - What Just Happened, Dashboard Movement, Why It Matters, Key Recap, and a 30-Second Reframe - so you see exactly how OEE, yield, scrap, TWIN, GEAR, GREEN, and AAI shift in real time. Every Part closes with a Momentum Page, showing how literacy, agility, and AAI scores rise from baseline firefighting to semi-autonomous maturity.Why this matters for you as a manufacturing executive: Boost OEE: Predictive maintenance, twins, and guardrails close downtime loops.Reduce Scrap: Simulation and AI inspection catch defects before they cost margin.Accelerate Throughput: Cycle time compression beats size and spend.Integrate ESG: GREEN turns sustainability into resilience and ROI.Scale Trust: Operators trained as AI co-pilots lift GEAR and adoption.Track Progress: AAI and Dashboard metrics make improvement visible, quarter by quarter.This isn't theory. It's the scoreboard for how you out-cycle disruption.The AI Advantage Series(TM) links every domain - Finance counts it, HR staffs it, Supply Chain moves it, Risk checks it, and Manufacturing makes it. Together, these volumes prove one blunt truth: literacy + agility beat brute force tech spend.If you're ready to stop buying slides and start moving metrics, this book is how manufacturing leaders out-cycle disruption - and finally scale autonomy by design.