Why Scaling Digital Transformation Remains U.S. Manufacturing's Biggest Challenge

While digital technologies continue to create new opportunities across U.S. manufacturing, many organizations find that achieving sustainable, enterprise-wide adoption is easier said than done.

From workforce adoption and change management to data integration and governance, the path from pilot projects to long-term success often presents challenges that technology alone cannot solve.

Ahead of Connected Worker Manufacturing Summit, industry leaders share the biggest barriers they have encountered while scaling digital transformation initiatives across their organizations.

J.B. Poindexter & Co.: Moving From Implementation to Enterprise Scale

For Rajeev Sinha, Head of AI at J.B. Poindexter & Co., the greatest challenge is not deploying technology but scaling it consistently across diverse manufacturing environments.

"The greatest challenge is not deploying connected worker technology but scaling it consistently across the enterprise. Diverse plant environments, fragmented systems, and varying levels of digital maturity make standardization difficult. However, technology is only part of the equation. The real differentiator is securing frontline adoption by addressing meaningful operational challenges and demonstrating tangible values. Organizations that succeed combine a scalable digital foundation with strong change management, governance, and outcome-focused metrics, creating a trusted path from pilot programs to enterprise-wide transformation."

PennEngineering: Tackling Data Quality, Integration and AI Readiness

According to Rocky Pinheiro, PhD, Global VP of Quality and Innovation at PennEngineering, fragmented data, integration challenges and workforce resistance remain significant barriers to scaling AI successfully.

"We have experienced many obstacles when implementing AI, including fragmented, low-quality data trapped in siloed legacy and other IT systems, difficulty integrating AI with aging equipment and existing workflows, workforce resistance and change-management gaps on the shop floor; unclear ROI and the challenge of moving from isolated pilots to enterprise-wide production, especially with our global footprint and concerns over data security and model reliability in mission-critical operations."

MKS Instruments: Overcoming Tribal Knowledge

For Barrett Hopper, Director of Operations for Americas at MKS Instruments, successful adoption begins with helping employees understand why change is necessary and where improvement opportunities still exist.

"One of the biggest challenges in scaling Connected Worker technology is overcoming tribal knowledge and helping employees understand why change is necessary. When experienced teams believe their current processes are working well, the need for new technology isn't always obvious. Connected Worker technologies provide the visibility, consistency, and insights needed to accelerate the journey toward operational excellence."

Reynolds Consumer Products: Making Change Management a Competitive Advantage

For Boris Voltchenko, Chief Information Security Officer and VP of IT at Reynolds Consumer Products, successful transformation depends on ensuring new ways of working are embraced across the organization.

"Change Management was by far the biggest challenge and opportunity that we have faced so far. A Connected Worker implementation is a disruption to the ways workers of all levels go about their daily work and, in many cases, the benefits are not immediately realized by the people who are impacted. Consistent enforcement and encouragement of adoption of these new processes by operational leadership, combined with demonstrated wins shared across the enterprise, is key to overall success."

ScottsMiracle-Gro: Building the Data Foundations for Scale

According to Kurt Kroplin, Vice President at ScottsMiracle-Gro, establishing consistent master data has become one of the most important requirements for scaling workforce connectivity initiatives successfully.

"As we scale our connected worker platform across 40 ScottsMiracle-Gro facilities, the single biggest obstacle we have encountered is master data integration. Unifying disparate equipment hierarchies, spare parts, and functional locations across diverse plants required a deep rethink of our architecture. We are conducting a 'virtual 5S' of our facility data infrastructure to balance site-level operational agility with central standardization."

Kimberly-Clark: Aligning People, Processes and Governance

For Donald Montgomery, Product Manager at Kimberly-Clark, scaling transformation requires alignment across people, processes, governance, systems and data.

"Our biggest challenge is aligning all of the functions. This includes all of the people, processes, data, and governance across a Fortune 200 company with multiple regions and dozens of manufacturing locations. Scaling requires consistent standards, integrated systems, reliable data, digital confidence, and clear ownership across different functions. Sustainable scale comes when Connected Worker becomes a common operating model that improves execution, decision-making, and frontline engagement across the enterprise."

Indorama Ventures: Driving Workforce Adoption at Scale

Jim Graves, Global Digital Manufacturing Head at Indorama Ventures, believes successful transformation depends on creating the right conditions for workforce engagement long after a pilot deployment has concluded.

"The primary challenge is workforce adoption and change management at scale. Pilot deployments tend to succeed disproportionately, benefiting from carefully selected sites, close implementation support, and strong internal advocacy. Scaling requires formal readiness assessments, documented best practices, and defined leadership sponsorship with clear accountability at each organizational level. Frontline workers must perceive measurable value in daily workflows rather than added procedural overhead."

Dana Incorporated: Avoiding Solution Overload

For Billy Hornsby, Global VP of Operational Excellence at Dana Incorporated, one of the greatest risks manufacturers face is introducing too many disconnected technologies without a clear strategy for adoption and integration.

"The most challenging thing facing organizations is the pace that new technology is being introduced to the shop floor from various functions. What we end up with is a lot of solutions with little understanding and nearly no adoption and even less user confidence. Independent solutions create more confusion and frustration. They aren't always working together to generate a single result or data set. The result is an overwhelmed workforce that has too much information to process."

Learn from U.S. Manufacturing Leaders Driving Transformation at Scale

From workforce adoption and change management to governance, data integration and solution overload, these insights reveal a common challenge facing manufacturers today: scaling successful pilot projects into sustainable enterprise wide programs.

Join industry leaders from organizations including Kimberly-Clark and ScottsMiracle-Gro to Dana Incorporated, Indorama Ventures, Reynolds Consumer Products, MKS Instruments, PennEngineering and J.B. Poindexter & Co., at Connected Worker Manufacturing Summit to explore the strategies helping manufacturers scale transformation with confidence.