More than half of manufacturers piloting digital transformation, Rockwell Automation reports

What you’ll learn:

56% of respondents said they are piloting “smart” manufacturing.
Of the respondents not currently adopting smart manufacturing, 69% said their companies plan to invest in the next 12 months.
41% said their companies have introduced AI and machine learning.
83% identify analytical thinking and communication and teamwork as most critical in recruiting the next-generation workforce.

The latest Rockwell Automation “smart” manufacturing report concludes that digital transformation at industrial organizations is “gaining momentum,” with more than half of respondents—56%—saying they are piloting “smart” manufacturing, another 20% reporting they are running Industry 4.0 technologies at scale and 20% saying they are planning future investments.

And of the respondents not adopting smart manufacturing at present, 69% said their companies plan to invest in the next 12 months.

Also a healthy majority of manufacturers (81%) in the survey said the obstacles they face, both within their own organizations and externally, are accelerating their digital transformations.

All in all, Rockwell’s 2025 State of Manufacturing Report strikes a positive tone about technology progress in the Industry 4.0 era, but it does note that “the skills gap and labor shortages remain primary business challenges.”

But "the shift towards smart manufacturing solutions is not correlated with reduced hiring. Respondents instead asserted their organizations’ plan to hire more people with technology skill sets and to retrain current employees," the 2025 report’s executive summary states.

The report surveyed 1,560 manufacturing leaders worldwide, decision-makers from 17 of the top manufacturing countries (30% in the Americas, 42% in the EMEA, and 27% in the Asia-Pacific region). More than half of those respondents (58%) work for companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

“AI offers a solution … and remains a challenge,” the 2025 report adds, nothing that respondents saw artificial intelligence technology as “a potential solution to labor shortages, skills gaps, quality control and managing external pressures. People recognize the promise of AI and have successfully deployed it for quality assurance but continue to look for ways to alleviate pressures like the labor shortage and skills gap.”

Report focuses on tech, cutting skills gaps, reducing labor shortages

The Rockwell Automation report has a focus on technology as a means to reduce skills gaps and alleviate labor shortages, noting that 41% of respondents have introduced AI and machine learning combined with an increase in automation to counter the skills gap and less available labor.

As external obstacles to growth for their companies, 34% from the Rockwell report name inflation and economic growth while 83% identify analytical thinking and communication and teamwork as the most critical factors in recruiting the next-generation workforce.

“With geopolitical and supply chain issues, manufacturers are under extreme pressure to rapidly adapt, and many are turning to smart manufacturing technologies to address these challenges,” the Rockwell report notes.

Half of respondents plan to use AI and machine learning to support quality control in the next 12 months and the report identifies practical AI as an immediate use case and key to their business operations and strategies.

Of the respondents, 38% also said their companies would use data collected from current sources to drive product quality monitoring and improvements. Globally, 43% of respondents said product quality and safety mattered most to their sustainability programs.

The respondents reported that their top five uses for AI in the next 12 months will be quality control (50%), cybersecurity (49%), process optimization (42%), robotics (37%), and logistics (36%).

In addition to AI, cybersecurity also plays a major role in the 2025 report, which identifies cyber incidents as both a major internal and external risk. This year, cybersecurity jumped to the No. 2 external risk (up from No. 5 last year) and third as the biggest obstacles to growth in the next year. More than a third of the respondents identified strengthening IT and operational technology architecture security as part of their five-year plan going forward.

The 2025 Rockwell Automation report cites a 2024 study by Black Kite that reported the manufacturing sector accounts for 21% of ransomware attacks and places manufacturing entities at a significantly high risk, making them more than three times as likely to suffer a ransomware attack.

What is your company doing about cybersecurity?

Supply chains, tariffs and emerging technologies as the answer

Supply chain disruption is the biggest concern for a fourth of 2025 respondents, with mining and pharmaceuticals feeling the most strain.

Companies are increasingly focused on reshoring and nearshoring operations to bring production closer to customers, address supply chain challenges, and blunt the effects of trade volatility in large part brought on at the moment by the Trump tariffs.

Emerging technologies and smart manufacturing, the Rockwell report says, will be key to more responsive and flexible operations.