New Research · State of Connected Manufacturing 2026

The AI Cliff Is Real.

Most manufacturers fall into the gap between insight and action. New benchmark research from 100 senior manufacturing leaders shows exactly where — and how the ones pulling ahead are closing it.

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38%

cite legacy OT/IT integration as a top barrier

36%

can't turn dashboards into real-time decisions

Only 29%

consistently act on data in real time

CONNECTED MANUFACTURING INSIGHTS

The State of Connected Manufacturing 2026

How today's decisions will shape AI integration, digital transformation, and the industrial workforce.

Benchmark data from 100 senior manufacturing leaders

Where AI, digital twins & autonomous robots stand today

The #1 reason data never becomes action

A 5-point plan to close the AI Cliff

THE CORE PROBLEM

Intelligence is piling up faster than operations can act on it.

Manufacturers are flooded with predictions, dashboards, and AI assistants, yet most still can’t turn that insight into action. The bottleneck isn’t the models. It’s the data foundation beneath them: connected, normalized, and governed — or not.

The manufacturers pulling ahead don’t layer AI on top of fragmented systems. They build a managed data foundation first, so every number is trustworthy and every workflow is ready for AI.

“In a 2026 survey, senior manufacturing leaders named their two biggest barriers: integrating data across legacy OT and modern IT (38%), and turning that data into real-time decisions on the shop floor (36%).”

Source: The State of Connected Manufacturing, 2026

Free Benchmark Report

Get the full 2026 data behind the AI Cliff.

See how 100 senior manufacturing leaders are scaling AI, digital twins, and automation — and exactly what’s stopping most of them from turning insight into action.