In-person · Executive peer exchange · Chicago

Manufacturing AI Executive Exchange

For Manufacturing Operations and IT/AI leaders responsible for putting AI into production.

Thursday, August 27, 2026
USG Corporation Headquarters · 550 W Adams St · Chicago, IL
12:00 PM–5:00 PM · Hosted lunch · Optional dinner

Complimentary · Limited attendance · In-person participation

What Are Global Leaders Like Owens Corning, USG, and REA Magnet Wire Actually Doing With Manufacturing AI?

Join Manufacturing Operations and IT/AI leaders at USG headquarters for a candid, hands-on exchange with manufacturers actively putting AI to work in production. Compare real use cases, see how workflows actually operate, understand where the economics come from, and learn how leading teams are moving from opportunity to proof to deployment and scale.

Leave better equipped to identify the right use cases, build the value case, align Operations and IT, and lead a credible factory AI initiative inside your organization.

Real Use Cases · Live Workflows · Business Value · Trust · Scale

Hosted by USG Corporation, with practitioner perspectives from leading manufacturers and Microsoft.

Organized and moderated by OpsMate AI.

Thursday, August 27, 2026
USG Corporation Headquarters · 550 W Adams St · Chicago, IL
12:00 PM–5:00 PM · Hosted lunch · Optional dinner

Complimentary · Limited attendance · In-person participation

Request Your Seat See the Agenda

Request Your Seat

Join manufacturing and technology leaders actively working through these decisions. Complimentary; seats are limited.

August 27

12:00–5:00 PM

Because each seat matters, please request a seat only if you expect to attend. Requests are reviewed to maintain a balanced peer group; if your plans change, let us know so we can offer the seat to another executive.

Four Decisions You Should Be Ready to Make

Move from scattered AI experiments to a practical operating plan: what to pursue, how to deploy responsibly, what the work looks like, and how to earn the next investment.

Leave with a clearer picture of what to pursue, what to avoid, and how to move forward inside your own organization—the operating playbook to lead factory AI where you work.

Request Your Seat

Which use cases are moving from pilot to production?
Hear what leading manufacturers chose first, what they learned, and how they are approaching deployment—candid practitioner exchange, not vendor hype.
What is a sensible factory AI strategy that balances innovation with production reliability?
Learn how teams move quickly without disrupting production: avoiding disconnected experiments, aligning Operations and IT, building in security and governance, and making sound architecture choices without overengineering the first project.
What does factory AI actually look like in use?
See live workflow walkthroughs: access information, assemble plant context and evidence, analyze, recommend, guide execution, initiate an approved action, and capture the outcome across troubleshooting, maintenance, quality, standard work, and knowledge access.
How do you turn a promising use case into something the business will fund and scale?
Select the right starting point, establish a baseline, quantify the opportunity, build a credible value case, align Operations and IT, and move from proof to production—then replicate what works.

Learn From Manufacturers Doing the Work

This is not a sequence of vendor presentations. Hear directly from manufacturing and technology leaders working through the same decisions your organization faces: where to start, what to build or buy, how to prove value, how to establish trust, how to align IT and Operations, and what it takes to move beyond a pilot.

Lou Stocco

Director, Manufacturing Advanced Analytics

USG Corporation

Ask about: choosing starting use cases and aligning executive, plant, and analytics teams around them.

Brian Perlstein

Global Leader, Digital Manufacturing Innovation

Owens Corning

Ask about: what internal experimentation taught them, and what it takes to move beyond a pilot in a global network.

David Hilker

Head of Information Technology

REA Magnet Wire

Ask about: capturing workforce knowledge, frontline use cases, and earning trust with plant users.

Manik Sarkar

Senior Director, Customer Transformation and Business Innovation

Microsoft

Ask about: the enterprise AI foundation—cloud, data, security, identity, governance, models, and agents.

Thane Hathaway

CEO

EAC Product Development Solutions

Ask about: turning engineering and operational data into workflows plants can actually deploy.

Moderator

Howard Heppelmann

CEO

OpsMate AI

Moderator. Keeping the discussion on real use cases, real workflows, and what it takes to deploy them.

Additional participants are being confirmed with each organization.

Hosted by

Co-sponsored by

Featuring perspectives from

August 27 · USG Headquarters, Chicago

Half-Day Agenda

Every session answers a different question you can take back to work.

12:00 PM
Small-group peer discussion
What Are You Trying to Solve?
Hosted lunch as the start of the working session. Compare your most important AI opportunity, your biggest obstacle, and where you are in the journey.
- You'll leave knowing: How other manufacturers are prioritizing AI right now
1:00 PM
Executive framing + workflow examples
What's Actually Possible Now—Beyond Chatbots and Copilots?
How manufacturing AI is moving from search and conversation toward access, context gathering, evidence analysis, recommendations, guided execution, approved action, and captured outcomes.
- You'll leave knowing: What has materially changed
- You'll leave knowing: What AI can realistically do in manufacturing today
- You'll leave knowing: Which capabilities remain immature for production
1:30 PM
Manufacturer exchange + value framework
Where Are Manufacturers Seeing Real Value?
Capacity, downtime, throughput, quality, maintenance, skilled-worker productivity, knowledge access, administrative workload, and response time—moving from problem to baseline to value hypothesis to measurable proof.
- You'll leave knowing: How to identify high-value starting points
- You'll leave knowing: How to establish a baseline
- You'll leave knowing: How to build a credible value case
2:00 PM
Live demonstration / workflow walkthrough
Show Me the Workflow
Concrete walkthroughs of factory AI in day-to-day plant work: troubleshooting, quality investigation, knowledge capture, work instructions, shift summaries, and agentic task execution. Not a software tour.
- You'll leave knowing: What a real manufacturing AI workflow looks like
- You'll leave knowing: How plant context and evidence change the answer
- You'll leave knowing: Where humans stay in control as agents move toward execution
2:30 PM
Break
Break
Brief pause and informal conversation.
2:45 PM
Microsoft / IT / manufacturer discussion
What Makes AI Trustworthy Enough for the Factory Floor?
Source grounding; plant, line, asset, product, and process context; real-time information; permissions; approved workflows; human supervision; security; auditability; validation.
- You'll leave knowing: What to ask before approving AI for production
- You'll leave knowing: How to distinguish generic AI from plant-context-aware AI
- You'll leave knowing: How manufacturers earn trust with frontline users
3:15 PM
Practical architecture discussion + Q&A
What Does the Architecture Look Like When One Use Case Becomes 20?
Structured and unstructured information, IT/OT integration, plant context, ERP/MES/CMMS/QMS/historian connectivity, the enterprise AI foundation, identity and permissions, reusable services, and plant-level configuration.
- You'll leave knowing: The architecture questions Operations should ask IT
- You'll leave knowing: The governance questions IT should ask Operations
- You'll leave knowing: What must be reusable so every use case isn't rebuilt
- You'll leave knowing: Why scale does not require identical workflows at every site
3:45 PM
Practitioner discussion + working framework
How Do We Actually Get Started?
A practical crawl-walk-run path: align Operations and IT, identify plant problems, prioritize by value and feasibility, set baselines, select a focused workflow, validate in production, measure adoption, and expand on evidence.
- You'll leave knowing: Who should be in the room
- You'll leave knowing: Which decisions to make first
- You'll leave knowing: How to avoid months of strategy before action
- You'll leave knowing: What a credible first 90–180 days can look like
4:15 PM
Candid peer panel + open Q&A
What Would You Do Differently If You Started Again?
Participating manufacturers on what worked, what did not, what was harder than expected, where they lost time, how they built internal alignment, and what surprised plant users.
- You'll leave knowing: Practical lessons and mistakes to avoid
- You'll leave knowing: Questions to take back to your organization
4:45 PM
Wrap-up · Optional
Closing Remarks and Optional Executive Dinner
Brief synthesis, followed by an optional dinner for continued peer conversation.

Request Your Seat

What you take back

Give Us Half a Day. Take Back a Factory AI Playbook.

A prioritized view of high-value manufacturing AI workflows
A method for connecting use cases to capacity, downtime, throughput, quality, and workforce productivity
A practical approach for establishing baselines and proving value
Real-world lessons from manufacturers putting AI into production
A clearer picture of what trustworthy manufacturing AI actually requires
A practical understanding of the architecture and governance needed to scale
A framework for aligning Operations, IT/AI, plant leadership, and executive sponsors
A concrete path for getting started inside your own organization

Leave better equipped to lead factory AI from opportunity through deployment—not simply participate in the conversation.

Request Your Seat

Who should attend

Built for the People Who Have to Make Factory AI Work

Manufacturing Operations

Plant Managers · Directors of Manufacturing and Operations · Multi-site and regional leaders · Maintenance and Reliability · Continuous Improvement and Operational Excellence · Manufacturing and Process Engineering · Quality · Digital and Smart Manufacturing

See where AI can remove operating friction, recover skilled capacity, improve decisions, automate administrative work, and help frontline teams execute more consistently.

IT / AI / Digital

Directors and Heads of AI · Manufacturing IT · Data and Analytics · Enterprise Architecture · Digital Transformation · OT/IT · Manufacturing Technology · AI platform and governance leaders

Learn how manufacturers are giving plants greater speed and flexibility without sacrificing enterprise architecture, security, data control, governance, or supportability.

Format

Not Another AI Conference

This is a small working exchange built around candid manufacturer experience. Instead of a day of vendor presentations, you will compare real use cases, see workflows in action, challenge assumptions, ask practitioners what worked and what did not, and work through the decisions required to apply AI inside your own operations.

Attendance is deliberately small so everyone can contribute, with the room built around Manufacturing Operations and IT/AI leaders accountable for results.

Request Your Seat

One afternoon with peers who are doing the work can save months of research and trial-and-error—on which workflows to pursue, where the economics come from, how to prove value, and what it takes to deploy and scale.

This is a candid, non-promotional discussion among peers. No pitches—just leaders comparing what has worked, what has not, and what they would do differently.

Request Your Seat

August 27, 2026 · USG Corporation Headquarters · 550 W Adams St, Chicago, IL · 12:00 PM–5:00 PM

Decision intelligence and execution for industrial operations, unifying fragmented systems and tribal knowledge so frontline teams can move from question to action with confidence.