______________________________________________________________ The Manufacturing Data Summit 2026
organizations including Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, DS Smith, British American Tobacco, Medik8, Johnson Matthey, Mars, and Babcock International Group. The program combined keynote presentations, panel discussions, practical case studies, and smaller roundtable conversations to encourage open exchanges about the challenges manufacturers face.
What emerged was a picture of an industry increasingly aware that technological capability is advancing faster than many organizations’ ability to deploy it effectively. AI may offer new ways to analyze industrial information and support operational decisions, but its value depends on the quality of the underlying data, the clarity of organizational responsibilities, and the willingness of employees to adopt different ways of working.
Moving beyond the AI pilot
One of the summit’ s central questions concerned the gap between successful technology demonstrations and enterprisewide transformation. Manufacturers have invested considerable effort in exploring AI applications, but translating those experiments into repeatable improvements across multiple facilities requires more than technical proof that a system works.
The conference program challenged participants to consider where digital
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