Industrial Transformation Leaders’ Series: 2026 Predictions

Executive Summary

As fractured supply chains, unstable energy markets, expanding use of AI and robotics, shrinking labour pools and unpredictable policy shifts become the norm, traditional operating models will lag behind industrial leaders’ needs and expectations. Organizations will prioritize responsive systems and resilience-first models in order to achieve one of the year’s key goals: building industrial agility.

Our predictions for 2026 guide is designed to help asset maintenance, reliability and operations leaders navigate these expectations, offering a glimpse of what to expect in the year ahead.


 

About the Authors

Malavika Tohani

Malavika Tohani

VP Research

Malavika is a VP Research at Verdantix, guiding research that explores how digital technologies and services are reshaping industrial operations to become safer, more efficien...

View Profile
Kiran Darmasseelane

Kiran Darmasseelane

Senior Manager

Kiran is a Senior Manager at Verdantix, delivering data-driven insights on emerging technologies and global market trends for asset-intensive sectors such as energy, manufactu...

Oliver Bridges

Oliver Bridges

Industry Analyst

Olly is an Industry Analyst in the Verdantix Industrial Transformation practice, where he leads research on asset lifecycle management (ALM) software. He helps asset-intensive...

View Profile

Other related content

Webinar
Manufacturing Operations Management
Industrial Transformation Leaders
Industrial Design Engineering Software
Industrial Analytics & Data Management
Field Services Management
Digital Transformation Leaders
Asset Performance Management Software
Asset Maintenance Software
AI Platforms & Applications
Predictions 2027: Industrial Transforma...

Upcoming / 26 January, 2027

Webinar
Industrial Transformation Leaders
Industrial Analytics & Data Management
Digital Transformation Leaders
Asset Performance Management Software
Asset Maintenance Software
AI Platforms & Applications
How Industrial Software Product Leaders...

Generative and agentic AI are changing the economics of industrial software, introducing variable, compute-heavy costs that sit uneasily with fixed SaaS subscriptions. Industrial b...

Upcoming / 25 November, 2026

Webinar
Industrial Transformation Leaders
AI In Action: High-Impact Use Cases For...

AI experimentation is widespread across industrial operations, but turning pilots into repeatable business value remains a challenge. As experienced technicians retire and critical...

Upcoming / 24 November, 2026

Webinar
Manufacturing Operations Management
Industrial Transformation Leaders
EHSQ Corporate Leaders
EHS Specialist Software
EHS Software & Services
Asset Maintenance Software
Asset Performance Management Software
Process Safety Management Software: Clo...

Process safety incidents happen when risk signals go unrecognised in time to act. The challenge for many organisations is that their software is built to record what occurred rathe...

Upcoming / 03 November, 2026

Webinar
Industrial Transformation Leaders
What It Takes To Scale Reliability Acro...

Many industrial organisations can point to a site where their reliability programme has delivered clear results. Replicating that success elsewhere is far more challenging. In th...

29 October, 2026

Blog
Industrial Transformation Leaders
Revisiting Our 2026 Industrial Transfor...

In January, we published ten predictions for industrial transformation in 2026. With the end of the year approaching, we have revisited four to see how they compare with developm...

22 October, 2026