The State of Manufacturing 2026: Building Toward the Connected Factory

Manufacturers have spent the past several years building the digital foundation: supply chain systems, production tools, workflow software. By most measures, it paid off, but today’s leaders report 20 points more complexity than previous years, not less. Better tools didn’t simplify the picture. They made the cracks underneath it visible.

Leaders are seeing those cracks across the lifecycle: quotes that are faster but less accurate, margin that leaks at nearly every handoff between teams, configuration rules re-entered by hand in system after system instead of set once and reused. Now manufacturers are rushing into AI on top of that same shaky foundation, even though AI can only amplify what’s already there.

Our survey of 280 manufacturing leaders across 8 countries traces exactly where silos and disconnected data is impacting profitability and what top competitors are doing to move the full manufacturing lifecycle as one.

In this report, you’ll discover:

• Where complexity is hitting hardest across the value chain
• Why more quoting tools haven’t solved the customization problem, and what actually will
• The full lifecycle sources of margin erosion between quote and delivery, and why no single team owns fixing it
• How manufacturing leaders across functions are governing and managing product configuration knowledge
• Why data visibility, not just more data, is what separates the leaders from everyone else
• Where AI investment is paying off first, and what has to be true before it can scale