Ahead of the Digital Manufacturing Strategies Summit USA, we sat down with Anthony Offredi, Director of Manufacturing at OutSystems. He discusses how the company is responding to digital transformation, what it hopes to gain from sponsoring the summit, and the biggest challenges and opportunities facing manufacturers. He also shares examples from recent projects that show how digital transformation has delivered real improvements for the companies OutSystems works with.
1. Tell us about yourself, your company, and your experience in the industry.
I’m Anthony Offredi, Director of Manufacturing Product Management at OutSystems. My work centers on helping global industrial organizations bridge the gap between Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) to modernize shop-floor execution, supply chains, and enterprise workflows.
OutSystems is an enterprise AI development platform. We provide a unified environment for manufacturers to build, run, and govern mission-critical applications and AI agents that sit on top of core systems of record—such as ERPs (SAP, Oracle, Infor), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS), and real-time data fabrics. Throughout my career, I’ve focused on solving the structural friction points on the factory floor: eliminating rigid legacy technical debt, taming fragmented data, and moving organizations from passive visibility to active, governed orchestration.
2. How is your organisation responding to digital transformation in the industry?
The industry is undergoing a major shift from standard digital automation (Industry 4.0) to autonomous orchestration driven by agentic AI. At OutSystems, we are responding by helping manufacturers bridge what we call the “Enterprise Gap”—the divide between fast, statistical AI experiments and production-ready, deterministic industrial systems that must operate safely on the shop floor.
We provide an orchestration layer that allows organizations to execute a “Clean Core” strategy. Instead of engaging in high-risk, multi-year “rip-and-replace” migrations of core ERPs or MES platforms, manufacturers use OutSystems to build modern web and mobile experiences on top of existing databases via reusable APIs. We’ve expanded our platform capabilities to include:
- Data Fabric: Creating a unified virtual data layer connecting SCADA, IIoT sensors, and ERP records.
- Agent Workbench: Allowing teams to compose and deploy specialized AI agents bounded by strict visual guardrails.
- Agentic Workflows: Automating human-agent handoffs with mandatory “human-in-the-loop” authorizations for high-risk actions before data writes back to core systems.
3. What outcomes do you hope to achieve in your participation at Digital Manufacturing Strategies Summit this year?
My primary goal is to help industry colleagues solve the “pilot purgatory” problem. Currently, between 61% and nearly 70% of manufacturers remain stuck in pilot mode with AI because they struggle to safely connect statistical models to live operational data.
At the summit, I want to share concrete, battle-tested frameworks showing how digital leaders move past mock sandboxes to achieve real production outcomes. We want to discuss how to drive measurable impact across core KPIs: improving Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), reducing Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), cutting scrap rates, and building audit-ready compliance evidence trails for regulatory mandates like CMMC 2.0 and the EU AI Act.
4. What excites you about the topics to be explored at the summit?
What excites me most is the evolution from passive visibility (static dashboards that merely display data) to active agentic orchestration (systems that detect anomalies, simulate disruptions, and execute corrective moves under human oversight).
I am also deeply passionate about open interoperability standards, such as CESMII’s Industrial Information Interoperability eXchange (i3X). Standardizing open APIs and information models removes vendor lock-in and API chaos, allowing plant-floor teams to build portable applications that run across any underlying infrastructure.
5. What do you see as the biggest challenges affecting the industry over the next 12-months?
- The Pilot-to-Production Bottleneck: Scaling AI from isolated experiments into governed production workflows without creating cybersecurity or operational vulnerabilities.
- Legacy Technical Debt & ERP Friction: Aging, rigid ERP and MES surfaces force manufacturers to pay a 10–20% “innovation premium” just to navigate tech debt, stalling shop-floor agility.
- The “Silver Tsunami” & Talent Drain: Over 1.9 million manufacturing jobs are projected to go unfilled by 2033. Veteran engineers and master craftsmen are retiring with decades of undocumented “tribal knowledge”.
- Supply Chain & Tariff Volatility: Over 82% of manufacturers are impacted by shifting tariffs, forcing rapid supplier base realignment that manual onboarding systems cannot support.
- Regulatory Gatekeeping: Mandatory compliance standards—such as CMMC 2.0 Level 2 (costing mid-sized defense suppliers up to $300,000 in year one) and the EU AI Act’s “High-Risk” machinery rules—are becoming strict prerequisites for winning contracts.
6. What surprises you most about digital transformation in the industry?
What surprises me most is the prevalence of “Shadow MOM”. Despite investing millions in enterprise software, up to 80% of daily plant operations—such as shift handovers, downtime logging, and quality checks—are still maintained in ad-hoc Excel spreadsheets, paper travelers, and email threads.
On the flip side, I am continually amazed by how quickly shop-floor workers embrace digital tools when designed correctly. When you replace paper clipboards with intuitive, mobile-first apps, workers who have been filling out paper logs for 20 years become motivated problem-solvers.
7. How do you see digitalisation and automation improving the sector?
- Frontline Superagency: Empowering workers with AI-assisted visual apps and knowledge agents, increasing individual productivity by 20–50% without adding headcount.
- Autonomous Supply Chain Resilience: Deploying AI agents that continuously monitor external signals (port delays, weather events), score supplier reliability, and draft alternate purchase orders before line-stops occur.
- Closed-Loop Quality & Maintenance: Connecting IIoT sensor telemetry directly to predictive maintenance tickets and Corrective Action (CAPA) workflows.
- Margin Expansion: High-performing digital manufacturers who achieve operational maturity outpace competitors by 18.5 percentage points in operating margins over five years.
8. Can you think of examples within your own projects of how automation / digitalisation has improved the sector?
- ACM (AllianceCorp Manufacturing): Built a multi-agent system on Agent Workbench that extracts material specs and pricing from technical drawings to compile supply chain cost reports, achieving a 300% ROI with a 6-month payback.
- SeAH Group: Modernized hundreds of 15-year-old MES screens in just 7 months during an SAP S/4HANA migration, achieving a 3x increase in developer productivity and a 90% reduction in user-reported bugs.
- Bosch: Built a global digital factory Center of Excellence (CoE) with 400+ developers delivering 500+ apps (including the Skillinx AIoT worker matching app), cutting assembly line ramp-up time from 4 weeks to 4 days.
- Mazda: Migrated 500 legacy systems to OutSystems, boosting development productivity by 4x and expecting over $50 million in migration savings.
- Oceaneering: Built a mobile inventory app managing $60M in offshore parts across 250+ locations, achieving 70% inventory accuracy and a 90% reduction in overdue orders.
- Carrier: Deployed a Supplier Collaboration Portal across 80+ factories to streamline purchase orders, order acknowledgments, and shipping notifications with live ERP integration.
9. What are the biggest opportunities for manufacturing in the coming years?
- Graduating from “Tasking” AI to “Hiring” AI Agents: Moving from static Q&A chatbots to specialized agents that autonomously execute work under human oversight.
- Clean-Core Decoupling: Building an agile experience layer over SAP S/4HANA or legacy ERPs so shop-floor apps survive backend system upgrades.
- Nearshoring & Supplier Agility: Using AI-driven onboarding and disruption copilots to activate new domestic supplier networks in days rather than weeks.
- Monetizing the Digital Thread: Turning compliance tracking (CMMC 2.0, Scope 3 ESG, Digital Product Passports) into a competitive advantage to win high-value contracts.
10. What are the biggest challenges relating to planning, designing and implementing your digital and automation strategies?
- The IT/OT Cultural Gap: Friction between plant managers (who prioritize daily OEE, throughput, and zero line-stops) and central IT/CISO teams (who prioritize governance, security, and standardization).
- Data Fragmentation: Relevant operational data living trapped in incompatible silos across legacy ERP master records, local spreadsheets, and unstructured PDFs.
- Lean IT Bandwidth: Development teams consumed by “keep-the-lights-on” maintenance, leaving no bandwidth for custom AI or mobile development.
- Over-Scoping Monoliths: Attempting massive “rip-and-replace” core overhauls rather than establishing an agile orchestration layer.
11. What did you learn from project experiences that might help industry colleagues going forward?
- Think Big, Start Small, Go Fast: Land a focused “wedge” use case (e.g., autonomous supplier onboarding, live parts catalog, or predictive maintenance) that delivers measurable dollar impact in weeks, then expand by pattern.
- Build for the 85–90% Frontline Workforce: If an app is too complex for a shop-floor operator wearing gloves on a tablet, adoption will fail.
- Enforce Governed Autonomy: Ensure AI operates within strict visual logic guardrails, providing full audit trails and “human-in-the-loop” approval gates before modifying ERP records.
12. What advice would you give someone who is just entering the industry and what, would you say, are your biggest career learnings?
- Go to the Gemba: Spend time on the plant floor where work actually happens. Learn the vocabulary of the shop floor—SQDCME, OEE, First Pass Yield, MTTR, and cycle times.
- Focus on Business Impact, Not Tech Hype: Executives don’t buy “AI” or “low-code”—they buy line-stop reduction, working capital efficiency, and risk mitigation.
- Focus on Superagency: The goal of modern digital tools is to elevate human potential, codifying veteran expertise into guided workflows so junior technicians can perform at senior levels.
13. Why should industry colleagues come to the summit in 2026?
The present transition toward autonomous AI orchestration is outpacing all previous industrial shifts in velocity. Summit attendees will see how digital leaders are bridging the IT/OT divide, escaping “pilot purgatory”, and establishing open data foundations (like i3X) to outpace their competitors by 18.5 margin points.
14. What is your top tip when attending summits and conferences?
Focus on Problem Statements over Product Features. When networking, ask your peers: “What single shop-floor bottleneck is keeping your plant in firefighting mode today?” or “How are you safely connecting AI agents to your live ERP/MES data?”. Look beyond vendor slides to see what architectures are running in production with verified auditability.
