Manufacturing Edge Summit - Event Recap

AI in Manufacturing: Transforming Operations Through Intelligent Automation

Session by: Jeremiah Owyang, Venture Capital Investor / Blitzscaling Ventures

Key Takeaways from AI in Manufacturing

What Are AI agents?

Autonomous software that perceives its environment, makes decisions, and takes action to achieve specific goals.

2 Types of AI Agent:

1. Traditional RPA (rule-based automation)
2. Agentic AI (goal-driven autonomy with dynamic reasoning capabilities).

“The Agentic AI acts as the brain while the RPA acts as the hands." — Jeremiah Owyang

• 80% of the world’s AI information exists on private clouds.
• We are entering a world that isn’t just B2C or B2B but is now B2A (business-to-agent) and B2A2A (business-to-agent-to-agent).

5 Practical Ways to Start with Agentic AI in Manufacturing

1. Appoint an AI champion: Assign a leader to run pilots and build an internal AI Center of Excellence.
2. Digitize docs: Deploy agents to read Bill of Materials, quotes, and specs from PDFs or spreadsheets.
3. Automate frontline messaging: Use AI agents for Tier 1 customer support and basic tasks like follow-ups and email responses, freeing teams to focus on higher-value work.
4. Improve maintenance: Agents can analyze logs and sensor data to predict service needs, and build natural language to communicate with humans and other agents.
5. Explore complex hybrid task management: Agentic AI excels at tasks too dynamic for RPA but not strategic enough for human intervention—like multi-system coordination, exception handling, and decision-tree-based workflows.

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Tariff-Proofing Profits: Turning Manufacturing Chaos into Financial Opportunity

Session by: Shawn DuBravac, President / Avrio Institute

Key Takeaways from Tariff-Proofing Profits

• There is unprecedented volatility in today's manufacturing landscape:

"Expected loss from supply chain disruptions can be as high as 42% of one year's EBITA." — Shawn DuBravac

• Stability is out and volatility is in, with manufacturing facing multiple challenges simultaneously, including tariff fluctuations and a looming demographic cliff as experienced workers retire.
• "Don't weather storms. Design for them." This means conducting tariff stress tests, establishing monitoring teams for policy shifts, and investing in digital supply chain tools to enhance agility and transparency.

5 Core Concepts to Turn Manufacturing Chaos into Financial Opportunity

1. Stability is out, volatility is in: Currently, there is a roughly 30% probability that we will see a recession over the next 12 months. It is estimated that this may rise as high as 50% to 60%.
2. Manufacturers are betting on the long run: There is 2-3x the amount of investment going into US manufacturing today compared to pre-pandemic levels. Manufacturing’s share of construction is also at an all-time high.
3. What is Datafication? Turning your operations into data that sheds new light on how things are working.
4. Datafication is changing business models: For example, traditionally, John Deere built a tractor and sold it for cost + margin and reinvested that margin to build better tractors. Now, AI and datafication have shifted their entire business model and they’re selling on a per-acre basis.
5. The time to change is now: Those who make the jump now have the chance to become leaders. And manufacturing leaders must make meaningful investments that will matter 5 and 10 years from now.

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Redefining Legacy Industries

Session by: Tim Noonan, Founder and CEO / Evertrak and Shama Hyder, Founder and CEO / Zen Media

Key Takeaways from Redefining Legacy Industries

How to think differently about your business:

“New product development and scale offer the path to better competitiveness.” — Tim Noonan

• Position your products: Consider the total cost of ownership, looking beyond the initial purchase price to consider full lifecycle costs including maintenance, replacement frequency, and disposal. This helps position premium products that may have higher upfront costs

“It’s not just about how to systemize the floor but how to create those systems for the cloud.” — Shama Hyder

• Understand that stakeholders don’t all share the same incentives and optimize for different metrics. Rarely does one person own all aspects of the total cost of ownership.
• Play the long game. Innovation in manufacturing requires patience.

4 Key Principles to Successfully Disrupt Traditional Industries

• Offer a painkiller, not a vitamin: Successful innovation solves real problems that customers are facing. Offer solutions for genuine pain points rather than nice-to-have improvements.
• Meet customers where they are: Recognize that you need to solve problems but also fit within customer budgets and demonstrate real-world performance. Build trust by understanding their constraints and how you can work within them.
• Value co-creation with customers: Develop relationships where you align risk, provide customer wins, and help advance their careers and goals.
• Embrace technology thoughtfully: Manufacturing is transitioning from labor-intensive processes to more automated, continuous manufacturing, celebrate improvements, but think thoughtfully about how these changes may cause unexpected risks for your business and employees.

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Manufacturing Edge: Live AI Implementation Strategies

Session by: Rohit Garewal, CEO / Object Edge and Sarah Evans, Head of PR / Zen Media

Key Takeaways from Live AI Implementation Strategies

• The manufacturing sector stands at a critical inflection point where traditional operations meet accelerating technological change:

“There is no A to B to C in manufacturing right now.” — Rohit Garewal

• Leaders must recognize that digital transformation isn't just adopting new technologies but reimagining business processes with data as the foundation.
• While immediate concerns like tariffs and supply chain disruptions ("Dust off your COVID playbooks.") demand attention, successful manufacturers are those who maintain strategic investments even during uncertainty.
• The digital experience for B2B customers serves as a protective moat rather than a growth accelerator — poor implementation could decrease business by 50%.

4 Crucial Strategies for Navigating Uncertainty in Manufacturing

1. Strategic Planning During Volatility: Navigate uncertainty with scenario planning, balancing short-term operations with long-term strategy.
2. Building Digital Foundations That Last: Focus on foundational data infrastructure before flashy tech. Start small with AI adoption but target high-ROI areas and prepare for the aging manufacturing workforce by capturing knowledge.
3. Customer-Centric Digital Transformation: Understand B2B digital experiences differently than B2C. Digital experience gaps cause customer loss.
4. Competitive Positioning for Long-Term Success: "Do hard things." — Rohit Garewal. Optimize for long-term competitive advantage (aim for "N of 5" position, where your company is one of only 5 in the world that can deliver your price, product, or quality) and focus on solving real customer problems. Invest in data and technology that creates differentiation.

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5 Crucial Overall Insights

1. The Age of Volatility: Manufacturing leaders must design for disruption rather than simply reacting to it. Create flexible supply networks, develop contingency plans, and leverage data.
2. AI as a Competitive Differentiator: AI is shifting from theoretical to practical applications that deliver measurable ROI.
3. The Digital Foundation: Before implementing advanced technologies, ensure your data infrastructure is robust. Clean, normalized, and accessible product, customer, and order data enables all future growth.
4. Workforce Evolution: 42% of US manufacturing is done by companies 60+years old. We are nearing a demographic cliff. Capture institutional knowledge and create systems to onboard new workers.
5. Balancing Horizons: The most successful manufacturers work on competing time horizons simultaneously—addressing immediate operational challenges while making meaningful investments that will matter 5, 10, and even 15 years from now.

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