Your digital transformation journey is unique.
Your Summit experience should be too.
Every delegate at the Digital Manufacturing Strategies Summit USA receives a personalised agenda built around their active priorities, current initiatives, and planned investment.
During registration, you outline the programmes you’re delivering and the challenges you’re addressing. We then curate your two-day experience — aligning you with the most relevant Think Tanks, Roundtables, peer discussions, and pre-scheduled 1-to-1 meetings.
Your time onsite is structured around what you’re directly responsible for — from smart factory scale-up to legacy modernisation and supply chain resilience.
Our Advisory Committee reviews aggregated priorities to ensure the programme reflects real-world execution challenges across US manufacturing.
The result? A focused, high-value experience where every session and conversation supports measurable progress.
Navigating smart manufacturing in new complex environments
Automation is advancing rapidly as AI moves into mainstream manufacturing operations. Digital execution is no longer optional — it’s critical across the value chain. At the same time, US manufacturers are navigating reshoring pressures, tariff volatility, commodity price shifts, and rising energy costs — all while driving performance across complex plant networks.
The Summit explores how to align IT and OT, integrate new technologies with legacy systems, scale AI beyond pilot phase, reduce operating costs through predictive strategies, and build a resilient, future-ready workforce. These priorities are addressed through four core themes reflecting the real delivery challenges facing US manufacturers today.
2026 Themes
Operational Excellence as the Foundation for Digital Manufacturing
Manufacturers are under growing pressure to improve productivity, quality and responsiveness while navigating reshoring, tariff uncertainty, rising operating costs and increasingly complex manufacturing environments. Digital technologies create new opportunities to strengthen operational excellence, but lasting results depend on stable processes, reliable data and a culture of continuous improvement. Success comes from improving the way work is done—not simply introducing more technology.
Operational Excellence & Continuous Improvement
Lean Manufacturing & Digital Transformation
Industrial IoT & Connected Factory Operations
Manufacturing Intelligence & Real-Time Visibility
Robotics & Advanced Automation
AI for Production & Operational Decision Support
Energy Efficiency & Sustainable Operations
Connecting Engineering, Manufacturing & the Digital Thread
Many manufacturing challenges are determined long before production begins. Decisions made during product design shape manufacturability, quality and cost throughout the product lifecycle. The opportunity is to connect engineering, simulation, new product introduction and manufacturing through a digital thread that reduces development risk and helps bring better products to market faster.
Strategic Priority Areas:
Digital Engineering & Product Development
Design for Manufacturability (DFM)
Value Engineering
Engineering Simulation & Virtual Validation
New Product Introduction (NPI)
Digital Twins Across the Product Lifecycle
Emerging Technologies, Including Quantum Computing
Building the Connected Factory
Connected manufacturing depends on more than adding sensors or collecting more data. Manufacturers need secure, interoperable infrastructure that connects machines, production systems and enterprise applications while making trusted information available where decisions are made. Strong data foundations, open standards and connected operations are what enable AI, automation and continuous improvement to scale across the enterprise.
Strategic Priority Areas:
Industrial IoT & Industrial Connectivity
IT/OT Integration
OPC UA & Open Standards
Edge-to-Cloud Architectures
Manufacturing Data Platforms
Enterprise Interoperability
Cybersecurity & Digital Resilience
Escaping Pilot Purgatory
Manufacturers have no shortage of successful pilots. The challenge is turning isolated successes into capabilities that can be deployed consistently across production lines, plants and business units. Too often, organizations become trapped in pilot purgatory because the operational foundations—standardized processes, trusted data, governance and organizational alignment—were never established in the first place. This theme explores what it takes to build those foundations and scale digital manufacturing with confidence without compromising safety, quality or delivery.
Strategic Priority Areas:
Scaling AI Beyond Pilot Projects
Data Readiness & Information Governance
Enterprise Architecture & Digital Standards
Leadership & Change Management
Workforce Development & Digital Skills
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Measuring & Scaling Business Value
Ready to Join the Conversation?
Whether you’re looking to attend, speak, partner or just explore further, we’d love to hear from you.
Spaces are limited and strictly by invitation.