TH E Q U E STION
Your Factory of the Future: How do you get the most from manufacturing tech investments?
TH E Q U E STION
Your Factory of the Future: How do you get the most from manufacturing tech investments? In each edition, we invite business leaders from across the manufacturing sector to give their views on the same question 2 | Manufacturing Outlook Issue 14
THE QUESTION YOUR FACTORY OF THE FUTURE
CHRIS LLOYD Chief Solutions and Technology Officer, Syspro Manufacturing technology investments will only deliver tangible outcomes if they are built on strong operational foundations. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) should provide this base, connecting the core data and processes that keep businesses running. When this information is reliable and connected, rather than fragmented, manufacturers can gain a clearer view of the business, which allows them to make smarter decisions faster. Once the fundamentals are in place, businesses must understand what obstacles are slowing them down and how they can address them. Without this clarity, organisations may race to deploy the latest tool without a clear idea of the intended impact, increasing the risk of investing in something that makes little to no difference to operations. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a clear example of this, with 80 percent of projects not delivering the gains that businesses had expected. On the factory floor, AI should strengthen the expertise of manufacturing teams, whilst keeping human judgement at the centre. This becomes especially important in regulated or safety-critical environments, where a glass-box approach helps ensure AI decisions are clear and explainable. To build factories of the future, they will need to be built on investments that solve clear problems in order to deliver meaningful outcomes. www.syspro.com
JAN DIEKMANN Global Vertical Lead Manufacturing – Private 5G Networks, Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions Maximising technology investments starts with getting the foundations right. Intelligent automation, AI, and augmented reality all have the potential to revolutionise the factory floor, but the greatest return on these investments stems from the connectivity infrastructure underpinning them. From everyday tasks through to complex projects, low latency, high-performance connectivity is required as factories become more digitalised. Without it, manufacturers run the risk of investing in technology they can’t fully implement. Reliable connectivity enables seamless collaboration between machines, systems, and people, more efficient ways of working, and provides the real-time visibility and responsiveness needed to make faster, more informed decisions. By making connectivity infrastructure core to digital transformation from the start, manufacturers can ensure new technologies integrate effectively, scale as needed, and deliver the maximum return on investment (ROI).
www.ericsson.com
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THE QUESTION YOUR FACTORY OF THE FUTURE
BEREND BOOMS Head of Enterprise Asset Management Insights, Ultimo Ask most manufacturers where their technology investments underperform and the honest answer is rarely the technology itself. It’s everything around it: tools that don’t fit how people actually work, data nobody trusts, and capability that’s purchased but never truly used. My first rule for the factory of the future is simple – adoption beats acquisition. A modest tool used daily by every technician outperforms a sophisticated platform used by nobody. Second, invest where value is measurable. Maintenance is
ANDREW KINGSLEY CEO Home Textiles International Marketing UK and Europe, Trident Group I don’t think the factory of the future is about being the most advanced, but it will be about the most integrated. To get the most from manufacturing technology investments, companies should start small, prove ROI on a single line or process, then scale quickly – all to help reduce capital risk but build confidence amongst the operators who will use the tech. Automation will be a huge part of this, and workforce capability has to grow with it. Any investment made on equipment will have to be matched in the training of operators and maintenance teams. Otherwise, even if you’ve got the best tech, it’ll be underutilised. Interoperability is equally as important, with manufacturing execution systems (MES), Internet of Things (IoT) platforms, and quality systems all needing to integrate seamlessly rather than create new data silos or proprietary lock-in. Every investment should have a measurable business outcome, whether that’s improving overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and first-pass yield, reducing energy per unit, or shortening lead times. If the link to a hard metric isn’t clear, the investment deserves scrutiny. Ultimately, the best strategy is not more or better tech, but connected, well-used tech, supported by skilled people, that enables data to flow from the factory floor to decisionmakers. www.tridentindia.com
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the proving ground: downtime in manufacturing can exceed USD$100,000 an hour, so every improvement in mean time to repair (MTTR) lands directly on the bottom line. Anchor investments to operational metrics and ROI stops being a debate. Third, treat AI like a new apprentice. Let it earn autonomy gradually – summarising shift logs, preparing work orders, flagging safety incidents – whilst your experts stay in control. Done well, AI doesn’t just consume your institutional knowledge; it captures it, before an ageing workforce carries it out of the door. The factory of the future isn’t the one with the most technology; it’s the one where technology serves its people – never the other way around. www.ultimo.com
THE QUESTION YOUR FACTORY OF THE FUTURE
DANILO KIRSCHNER Managing Director, Zoi North America To maximise manufacturing tech ROI, start with the connective tissue: robust IT/OT integration, clean and secure data pipelines, and scalable cloud foundations. Architectural groundwork and data governance are nonnegotiable. For instance, Kärcher’s shift to 95 percent cloud penetration established the groundwork for its first fully cloud-native plant in Vietnam, proving that modernised cloud infrastructure precedes advanced automation. Today, they are rapidly developing into an agentic enterprise, based on an ‘Agent Factory’ approach. The factory floor doesn’t care about AI hype; it demands tangible operational impact. Tech investments escape pilot purgatory only when grounded in deep domain knowledge rather than generic prompts. Quality inspection succeeds when models learn your specific defect taxonomy; predictive maintenance works when algorithms synthesise technician logs alongside sensor telemetry; and enterprise knowledge management delivers when implicit operator knowledge is digitised before key staff retire.
The manufacturers leading the market aren’t buying offthe-shelf AI platforms on hope. They treat AI as a business imperative, aligning tech investments directly with targeted profit and loss objectives. By starting on a single production line with a focused use case and clear key performance indicators (KPIs), they scale what works and ruthlessly discontinue pilots that fail to show measurable ROI within 90 days. www.zoi.tech
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THE QUESTION YOUR FACTORY OF THE FUTURE
STEPHEN TAGG Global Application Sales Manager Software, Markem-Imaje
JESUS HERNANDEZ SVP, EMEA, AVEVA To get the most from manufacturing technology investments, companies need to treat digital transformation as a journey towards better, faster decision-making, not as a collection of standalone projects. That starts by identifying the outcomes that matter most to the business, whether that be improving OEE, reducing energy and material waste, strengthening quality, or responding more quickly to disruption. From there, manufacturers can build a connected digital backbone that brings operational, IT, and engineering data together, creating a trusted, common view of the business. This is critical because AI, analytics, and digital twins can only deliver meaningful results when they are fed consistent, contextualised information. It also makes successful use cases easier to replicate across sites, reducing technical debt and accelerating value. Most importantly, technology must work for the people using it. By involving operators and engineers early, manufacturers can ensure insights are presented in context and at the moment decisions need to be made. The result is a progressive, scalable approach: start with a measurable challenge, prove the impact, and use that foundation to extend connected intelligence across the enterprise. In the factory of the future, the real return comes from turning trusted information into action, continuously scaling what works.
www.aveva.com
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Many manufacturers invest heavily in robotics, AI, and analytics, yet they overlook the “final metres” of digital transformation: data flow to packaging lines, where products are packaged, coded, labelled, and verified. McKinsey & Company research shows that whilst most industrial companies are implementing digital solutions, only about one in five report high levels of success, with fragmented data landscapes and legacy infrastructure among the main barriers to robust, secure IT/OT architecture. This disconnect leaves operators manually entering batch numbers, changing date codes, or transferring information between systems. This manual data entry is a bottleneck, responsible for approximately 20 percent of production mistakes, including incorrect packaging and printing errors. A single incorrect code or label can lead to rework, rejected goods, fines, compliance issues, or recalls. To maximise technology investments, factories must prioritise automated information flow. Linking ERP, MES, and warehouse management system (WMS) environments with packaging, coding, labelling, and verification equipment creates a single source of truth. Connected packaging automation can reduce manual data entry and message data maintenance costs by up to 90 percent. It can half changeover duration, saving hundreds of hours each year, support fully compliant finished products, and reduce coding errors, helping manufacturers cut up to 15 percent from total running costs.
www.markem-imaje.com
THE QUESTION YOUR FACTORY OF THE FUTURE
VIRENDRA SHELAR Executive Officer, President, and CEO, OMRON EUROPE B.V The factories getting real value from technology start with the shopfloor and bring people, processes, and technology together around a clear business need. Continuous improvement and digitalisation should reinforce each other. The key is to start small and prove that a solution delivers measurable value to be able to scale with confidence. Connected data and automation can help teams improve productivity, quality, and resilience. Predictive maintenance illustrates this well; instead of discovering a problem when a machine stops, data can identify signs of wear weeks in advance and your maintenance team can replace the part on their own schedule. That is a return measured in hard numbers: less downtime and less waste. When looking at technology investments, from AI to robotics, vision inspection to connected sensors and digitalisation, we should always ask: what value will this bring, and what will actually change? If the answers are not clear, the investment is paying for a label, not results. The best technology builds on the expertise of people on the shopfloor and gives them better information and tools to make better decisions. Get that right, and the factory of the future will be built on a sound business case. www.omron.com
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THE QUESTION YOUR FACTORY OF THE FUTURE
DAVE EVANS President and CEO, MISUMI Americas and CEO and coFounder, Fictiv We finally have the technology to attack the constraints that have limited throughput, quality, and productivity on factory floors for decades. The opportunity is significant – but it starts with solving the right problem. The factory of the future starts with walking the floor, looking at the value stream, and identifying where throughput is actually being constrained. Maybe it’s a changeover that drives too much downtime, an inspection process dependent on tribal knowledge, or a machine that has become the bottleneck. Start there. Remove one real constraint, measure the impact, and prove the ROI. Once operators see that technology is making the work better, adoption and momentum follow quickly. I’d also challenge the idea that the factory of the future is a lights-out factory. The best manufacturing operations I see are the ones that have designed the right balance between skilled people, automation, and intelligent systems. Machines excel at repeatability, precision, speed, and high-volume tasks. People excel at troubleshooting, judgment, and adapting when production falters. Get that combination right and you increase throughput, reduce rework, and unlock capacity from the equipment and workforce you already have. Once you start with the constraint, establish the baseline, measure improvement, and scale, operational transformation follows. misumi.com
SURAJ SRIRAM Digital Manufacturing Leader, Kimberly-Clark The biggest mistake manufacturers make is treating technology implementation as the finish line. In reality, it’s the starting point. Over the past 15 years leading digital manufacturing initiatives at Kimberly-Clark and Kohler, I’ve seen the same pattern repeat. A new system goes live, performance improves, and everyone celebrates. Then, over time, adoption declines, workarounds emerge, and data quality starts to slip. What looked like a successful deployment
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gradually delivers less and less value. The reason is simple: technology amplifies the environment it is deployed into. If processes are inconsistent, data is unreliable, or people are not prepared for new ways of working, the technology will expose and often magnify those weaknesses. At Kimberly-Clark, we learnt this lesson first-hand that scaling technologies across a large manufacturing network was much harder. The breakthrough wasn’t a better technology stack; it was establishing a repeatable foundation of people readiness, process discipline, and data integrity. Technology doesn’t create value on its own – it simply provides the capability. People and processes are what turn that capability into business results. www.kimberly-clark.com
THE QUESTION YOUR FACTORY OF THE FUTURE
ANDREW POWER Head of UKI, Tricentis The future factory will not be defined by how much technology manufacturers adopt, but whether they can make it work reliably at scale. AI, robotics, and digital twins can deliver gains, but only when they operate on reliable, well-governed software. As manufacturers connect AI and automation with critical operations, they need to know that the software making decisions, controlling processes, and moving data can be trusted. The mistake is treating software quality as the last gate before go-live. Quality needs to be built in from the start, testing early and continuously so defects are identified before they become production problems. In manufacturing, a software defect is a production event. It can stop lines, delay shipments, trigger compliance exposure, and damage customer confidence, making software quality a question of operational resilience rather than IT hygiene. Yet, our Quality Transformation Report found that 57 percent of manufacturers globally still deploy code changes without fully testing them. Getting more from manufacturing technology investments therefore starts with redesigning the process around quality: testing continuously from the earliest stages of development, rather than relying on a final check before deployment. This helps manufacturers make AI, automation, and connected systems work together reliably, safely, and at scale. tricentis.com
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THE QUESTION YOUR FACTORY OF THE FUTURE
DON ROGERS Manufacturing Industry Lead, Slalom When manufacturers think about the factory of the future, the conversation often starts with technology. In my experience, it should start with the business outcome you’re trying to achieve. Whether the goal is improving quality, increasing throughput, reducing downtime, or capturing critical knowledge before experienced workers retire, technology is only one part of the equation. I encourage manufacturers to focus on three things,
ROB NICOL UK Sales Director, Verizon Business The future of manufacturing isn’t about chasing shiny tech for its own sake – it’s about building practical resilience into the factory floor. We all know the pressure points: supply chain volatility, rising costs, and shifting demand. Modernising operations to handle those pressures isn’t easy, but sitting still isn’t an option either. When we talk about the ‘smart factory of the future’, we don’t view it as a distant ideal. It’s about getting private 5G networks, AI-driven quality control, and mobile edge computing (MEC) to actually talk to each other in real time. Private 5G provides the ultra-reliable, low-latency backbone, whilst edge computing processes data right where it’s generated – on the plant floor. That’s why 91 percent of manufacturers we survey tell us 5G connectivity will be critical to their future. To make these tech investments pay off, the focus needs to be on utility, not complexity: • AI and Machine Learning: It’s not just about collecting data; it’s about turning shop-floor signals into predictive insights so teams can make faster, smarter calls on the fly. • Robotics and Automation: Combining advanced 5G edge architecture with localised computing allows autonomous systems to handle complex, unstructured environments safely and dynamically. www.verizon.com
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in this order: people, process, and technology. First, understand how people do their work and make decisions, then look at the process. If a process isn’t well understood or consistently followed, AI won’t fix it; in many cases, it simply accelerates existing problems. Once those pieces are in place, technology can play a powerful role. The manufacturers seeing the greatest ROI today aren’t necessarily the ones with the most advanced tools. They’re the ones that have aligned their teams around a clear business objective, built trust in their data, and embedded new capabilities into day-to-day operations. The factory of the future isn’t defined by the technology you install; it’s defined by how effectively people, processes, and technology come together to create measurable business value.
www.slalom.com
THE QUESTION YOUR FACTORY OF THE FUTURE
PHIL HADFIELD Regional Sales Director (UK & Ireland) and UK Managing Director. Rockwell Automation
JIM TOBOJKA Senior Vice President, Global Operations, TE Connectivity The conversation about manufacturing technology often centres on the next breakthrough. The more interesting challenge begins after a technology proves it can work. The question then becomes whether that improvement can be replicated across a global operations network where sites, products, and operating conditions aren’t always the same. We’ve seen solutions deliver strong results in one part of the business, only to encounter a different reality elsewhere. What works in one environment can’t simply be copied and pasted into another. Success depends on understanding why an improvement worked and what it takes to apply it in a different setting. That has shaped the way we approach technology adoption at TE Connectivity. We’ve invested in connecting data and people across our operations to create greater consistency in the way information flows through the network. The goal is to make it easier for successful improvements to move beyond a single site and be applied more broadly. That’s where we’ve seen the greatest return from manufacturing technology investments. Not from proving that a solution works once, but from creating the conditions that allow it to be adapted, adopted, and repeated across the network.
For manufacturers, getting the most from investment in technology is less about buying new technology and more about making existing systems work together effectively. For many UK manufacturers, the technology is already in place. The challenge now is making it deliver. Digital technology is already widely used, so the focus now is on whether those investments deliver measurable improvements in performance and resilience. Rockwell Automation’s 2026 State of Smart Manufacturing research shows the scale of that investment: UK manufacturers allocate 27 percent of operating budgets to industrial technology, yet only 45 percent of collected operational data is used effectively. That leaves considerable untapped value in technology manufacturers have already paid for. That means the factory of the future can’t be built around disconnected systems. Manufacturers should focus on integrating data and systems, building cybersecurity into those systems from the outset, and ensuring employees have the skills to work effectively alongside AI and automation. Digital twins also give manufacturers a way to test changes and optimise performance before making changes on the factory floor. The manufacturers that get this right will be those that connect their technology and data effectively, whilst giving their people the skills to make the most of both. www.rockwellautomation.com
www.te.com
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THE QUESTION YOUR FACTORY OF THE FUTURE
TUE MICHEELSEN President, Novonesis North America Getting the most from manufacturing technology investments starts with knowing what you need the technology to do. The investment should solve a real problem, improve how you operate, or create an opportunity you could not capture before. At Novonesis, we typically generate two to five percent more volume each year through productivity improvements before we reach the point where additional capacity is
AMIT CHADHA CEO and Managing Director, L&T Technology Services Start with the engineers, not the software. Most manufacturers I talk to are piloting AI, but only a few have moved it into day-to-day operations. The stalled pilots are almost always where the technology arrived before anyone defined which engineering constraint to respect and which numbers to move. That gap will narrow when technology follows engineering, not the other way around. This is the premise of engineering intelligence – the convergence of AI, deep engineering expertise, and real-time operational data. In a physical system, intelligence creates value when it can be translated into decisions that respect engineering constraints. In manufacturing, the objective is not to bolt AI onto a plant, but to embed intelligence into the workflows that already govern quality, throughput, and uptime – anchoring investments to measurable outcomes. Three disciplines determine success: an engineering roadmap anchored in value, an operating model that ties every use case to a measurable business outcome, and a workforce equipped to own the tools. Get these right, and technology stops being a cost line and becomes the engine of sustained operational advantage. www.ltts.com
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needed. Technology and advanced analytics can help us find those opportunities and apply what we learn to future investments. The foundation matters, too. We have spent years investing in data infrastructure and machine learning. AI is a powerful tool, but its value depends on what you put into it. For us, that means combining technology with proprietary data, biological knowledge, and decades of experience. In North America, we also have to think about the people operating these increasingly advanced facilities. Manufacturing brings together biology, engineering, data, and automation. Getting the full value from those investments requires people with the skills to work across them. Ultimately, we invest where technology can make a meaningful difference, improve productivity, and strengthen our manufacturing capabilities.
www.novonesis.com
THE QUESTION YOUR FACTORY OF THE FUTURE
FARÈS SAKKA Director of Smart Industries – Americas, Orange Business The factory of the future should be an integrated ecosystem. Security depends on the network, cloud services run on secure lines, and applications rely on a resilient platform. This is especially critical in AI deployments; you cannot simply bolt AI onto an existing infrastructure and expect great results. The foundation requires clean, connected data flowing from IT/OT integrated systems. Manufacturers struggle with digital transformation because this interconnectedness involves many divergent technologies. First, assess what you have before you start shopping. Run a digital enablement review to understand what your current infrastructure can do. For AI projects, this means ensuring your operational data is accessible, secure, and ready to feed your AI. Aim for a single, unified architecture. For the least amount of friction, pick a vendor who can orchestrate all the pieces; this will eliminate the risk of a slow, overcomplicated IT stack. Scale your investments slowly. Prove value in one project and use the learnings to expand to other parts of your operation. Remain grounded by focusing on realistic, quantified outcomes. And remember, technology should enable those results, not define them. www.orange-business.com
DR JULIA PENFIELD Chief AI Officer, VelocityEHS Manufacturers can get more from their technology investments by buying for the problem, designing for adoption, and measuring outcomes. First, start with the problem, not the product. Too much technology is bought because it’s new or because “everyone” is using AI. The tools that earn their keep are built around a specific operational problem. That takes discipline, especially with AI, which has quietly become synonymous with “chatbot”. A general-purpose model bolted onto your operation is not a strategy. Bigger and flashier isn’t smarter; your hardest problems usually need something built for exactly that job. Second, design for adoption. The most expensive technology in any factory is the kind nobody uses. However impressive the demo, a tool that doesn’t fit how people already work becomes shelfware. Involve the people who’ll use it and build it into their workflow, don’t ask them to invent a new one. Third, measure what changed, not what you deployed. Did it prevent a failure? Cut downtime? Send a worker home whole? “We rolled out AI” is not a result. Overall, the best technology doesn’t replace the people who know the operation. It puts their expertise on the floor at 6am, when they can’t be. www.ehs.com
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