How do you balance performance, cost optimization and agility in an economically, socially and environmentally unstable world — at the crossroads of technological acceleration? That's the ambitious, boldly stated theme of the workshop led at the Tech For Industry Show by Estelle Béranger, SAP Solutions Advisor (NTT DATA Business Solutions, with more than 30 years supporting international industrial mid-sized companies) and Hend Khelif, Logistics Consultant (NTT DATA Business Solutions), specializing in production planning and quality management. Running throughout: findings from a study conducted among more than 1,000 industrial companies.

The figures shared during the session give a sense of the momentum: 60% of large manufacturers use industrial cloud platforms — a figure continuing to grow; 65% of companies increased their cloud usage after their transformation, a sign that beyond adoption, optimizing within market standards pays off; 47% see the cloud as the main accelerator for AI access — assistants, agentic AI, embedded AI; and 72% factor in data sovereignty concerns, an area where SAP and NTT DATA work with sovereign cloud partners to protect European data.

Other findings: companies launch their transformations to adopt new technologies, 76% of clients interviewed already use AI — notably on the technical aspects of transformation programs — and 63% for data quality. NTT DATA, a major SAP partner (more than 25,000 SAP consultants worldwide, 1,500 clients), adds its own accelerators: business templates embedding AI right down to the project implementation method.

The SAP public cloud ERP — launched more than six years ago — evolves through continuous releases. Two references shared during the session: an Australian manufacturer within the NTT DATA group deployed in under 100 days — "it sounds like marketing, but it's a reality: solid fundamentals, a project method, and executives who say 'the standard works for me'" — and Califorme, a French SME with €20 million in revenue "that looks like a big company": production, quality, warehouse management, all deployed in an SME environment through rigor, change management and training. More than 150 industrial clients have deployed the solution. And for processes specific to each business: applications built on the SAP platform — not forgetting that SAP Joule also extends to on-premise S/4 systems.

Presented with infectious enthusiasm — "more visibility, less production headaches, everything connected, and above all more control" — SAP Digital Manufacturing (SAP DM) is built around two components: DM Execution, the "shop floor's right hand" (manufacturing orders, production tracking, quality), and DM Insights, which measures and analyzes key KPIs in real time. Claimed strengths: native cloud connectivity, a modern interface, and scalability that allows deploying "dozens of sites without a single server."

Features reviewed: operations orchestration (orders, resources, staff, materials) for uninterrupted execution; SFC tracking (shop floor control) to follow each step and detect priority orders, staff or material shortages; real-time visualization with differentiated dashboards — an operational view for operators, global indicators for managers — and continuously tracked KPIs: OEE (overall equipment effectiveness), yield rate, downtime rate, scrap rate; data collection via sensors and IoT, analyzed in production context to act before quality is impacted; the POD (Production Operator Dashboard), an operator station fully customizable via plugins; API integration with ERP, MES and external applications for complete digital continuity; and built-in predictive maintenance.

The use case detailed: AI-assisted visual inspection. From goods receipt to shipping, quality operators inspect every part — and the AI, built into the POD, "doesn't just look: it shows where the problem is," framing potential anomaly zones in red for closer inspection. Benefits: faster, more reliable inspection, reduced defect rates — "humans, even sharp ones, have their limits" — simplified operator training (the AI "acts as a personal coach"), and real-time assisted decision-making. These checks can be carried out by humans as well as by industrial vision systems — "robots that never take a coffee break."

NTT DATA, which has historically developed its own solutions and trained its teams in AI for a long time, presents two initiatives: custom AI — a GenAI accelerator based on SAP technology, orchestrating different AI sources (order matching, product recommendations, work orders) — and "Supercharge ERP": more than twenty business agents built into processes, to optimize repetitive tasks, complex searches, validations and sorting in quality processes. The demo presented: within a public cloud ERP with SAP Joule, searching for the best pump based on customer technical criteria (degrees, bar count), with suggestions, human selection, then automatic follow-through on bill of materials, product range and product — speeding up the entire order-to-cash process. The method proposed to clients: a prepared one-day workshop, to leave with a complete process iterated with AI. One observation: the group's more advanced UK clients are already reaping significant productivity gains.

The closing, "somewhat philosophical" note: today, humans still always decide — AI analyzes and the agent executes. The range of possibilities is immense, and according to Estelle Béranger, with 35 years in the SAP ecosystem: "we're only at the beginning."

This workshop shows how industrial cloud, once adopted, becomes the natural foundation for AI in production: real-time visibility, AI-assisted visual inspection, and business agents built directly into ERP processes — with a principle reiterated in closing: a clear division of roles between human decision-making, AI analysis, and agent execution.

Watch the full workshop, along with the other Tech For Industry Show replays, on our dedicated page.