Our annual State of Initiative Survey is open!

Your answers to the 20-question survey form the basis of our annual report (out early next year) that offers answers on the opportunities and challenges of digital transformation.

Scott Achelpohl

Nov. 5, 2025

Key highlights:

The survey informs Smart Industry's early-year State of Initiative Report, an important barometer on the status of digital transformation in manufacturing.
This year, the report revealed the level of executive buy-in and that AI and machine learning were taking center stage.

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Next year's State of Initiative Report by Smart Industry should offer a compelling snapshot about how manufacturers are adapting to the opportunities and challenges of digital transformation in the Industry 4.0 era (hurtling, many would argue, toward human-centric Industry 5.0, thanks to AI).

The findings also should shed a lot of light on the current state of automation, workforce readiness, technological adoption, AI's advancement, and much more.

But we gotta get there, so we ask that you please take a few minutes to answer our survey! We'll issue our important whitepaper with lots of charts and graphs on the data we gather from you (confidentially) this January, right after the holidays.

About the Author

Scott Achelpohl

Head of Content

I've come to Smart Industry after stints in business-to-business journalism covering U.S. trucking and transportation for FleetOwner, a sister website and magazine of SI’s at Endeavor Business Media, and branches of the U.S. military for Navy League of the United States. I'm a graduate of the University of Kansas and the William Allen White School of Journalism with many years of media experience inside and outside B2B journalism. I'm a wordsmith by nature, and I edit Smart Industry and report and write all kinds of news and interactive media on the digital transformation of manufacturing.