The Manufacturing Leadership Council’s survey report on the “AI-powered factory of the future” finds AI adoption in manufacturing is still early but rapidly accelerating, with 68% saying AI will be foundational for competitiveness by 2030 and 61% expecting AI investment to rise in the next two years. Enterprise governance is building momentum (35% have it, 35% developing it), but operations lag (18% have an operations AI strategy; 43% developing). Today, vision systems (72%) and machine learning (46%) dominate, while expected growth is strongest for machine learning (to 73%) and edge AI (from 20% to 45%), with agentic and physical AI emerging. Biggest blockers are data readiness (lack of useful data 65%, poor structure 62%), skills/trust (82% skills gap), and legacy integration/scaling (legacy/connectivity 78%, scaling pilots 66%), underscoring the need for phased “crawl-walk-run” execution, clear leadership ownership, and stronger measurement beyond cost and productivity.

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