Report: Five Shifts That Will Shape the Future of Industry

The future of manufacturing is shaped by rapid technological shifts, rising sustainability demands and a growing skills shortage. At the same time, the industry is entering a more uncertain era where new requirements and changing conditions are redefining competition.

This is highlighted in the report “C the Shift: Redefining Global Manufacturing”, published by the publicly traded IT consultancy Columbus, headquartered in Denmark.

The report is based on interviews with industry leaders, researchers and experts and identifies five major shifts—data, AI, security, skills and sustainability—that are now shaping industrial competitiveness.

The first shift concerns data. Many companies collect large volumes of information but lack structure, quality and clear ownership. That slows decision-making and digital initiatives, says Toby Mankertz, head of manufacturing strategy at Columbus.

“Organizations rely on local documents and spreadsheets, undocumented workarounds and metrics that measure activity rather than progress. You need to build a foundation you can actually trust,” he says in the report.

The second shift is AI, which the report frames as a change-management challenge rather than purely a technology project. Kasper Lynge Jacobsen, AI director at the Danish Chamber of Commerce, warns that layering new technologies on top of outdated working methods risks embedding inefficiencies rather than removing them.

The third shift involves increasingly connected value chains that become more vulnerable as products receive digital identities and must be traceable across their lifecycle. This raises the demand for systems that can exchange data securely.

Christine Charlotte Akselsen, CEO of the Norwegian cloud company Kezzler, explains that systems must “speak the same language.” Without shared standards and interoperable architectures, even well-structured data will remain trapped in silos instead of flowing between suppliers, logistics partners and customers.

“Trust can’t be bolted on later. It must be built into the architecture from the start,” she says.

The fourth shift concerns skills. The workforce is aging while competition for technical talent is intensifying. Greta Braun, a researcher at Chalmers University of Technology, calls it a structural issue when an entire generation is approaching retirement and too few young people choose industrial careers.

She argues that simply recruiting more people is not enough—companies must create workplaces that make people want to stay.

“Getting more women into technical programs won’t fix the problem by itself. A workplace culture that encourages them to remain does,” she says.

The fifth shift is sustainability. Companies that reduce energy use, material waste and resource consumption improve both profitability and competitiveness.

Steve Evans, professor of industrial sustainability at the University of Cambridge, notes that many companies make the transition more expensive than necessary.

“There’s a misconception that sustainability requires costly technology investments. The biggest gains often come from using common sense to stop waste in the factories,” he says.

Miying Yang, professor of sustainability at Cranfield University, urges companies to consider not only the value they create but also the value they lose, and to explore opportunities in repair and reuse.

“It’s important to understand the value you generate, but you also need to see what value you are missing out on,” she says.

The report concludes that there is no one-size-fits-all model. Different industrial companies will need different paths. Those that become most competitive will be the ones that understand their operations, adapt quickly and demonstrate that changes deliver measurable results.