Manufacturing IT teams are further along with proactive and partly autonomous problem resolution than their peers, but they are less sure it pays off. TeamViewer's research on the autonomous digital workplace finds 68% of manufacturing IT decision-makers already use proactive (43%) or partially autonomous (25%) approaches, against 56% in the technology sector and 58% across industries.
Yet 32% of manufacturers cite uncertainty about AI's value or business impact as a barrier to adoption, twice the 16% in technology and above the 21% across all industries. Security, privacy and risk concerns (47%) and a lack of skills or training (34%) complete manufacturing's three most-cited barriers.
Manufacturing respondents report personal gains, with 44% saying AI already makes them more productive, against 39% across industries. They spend an average of 1.6 hours a week verifying AI outputs, compared with 1.9 hours across industries and 2.7 hours in technology, and 35% expect to delegate more tasks to AI by 2030, against 28% overall.
On oversight, 46% in manufacturing want a human involved when security, data or business operations could be affected, compared with 40% across industries. Mei Dent, Chief Product and Technology Officer at TeamViewer, said many manufacturers run on systems built over decades and cannot simply replace them, and that "the organizations creating the most value are often those solving these small problems at scale and consistently demonstrating the results in specific use cases".
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