Factory Floors Lead Industrial AI Adoption, While Governance Lags

The survey of more than 2,200 senior decision-makers in 14 countries found that engineers, plant managers, service leaders and logistics managers are using AI to improve daily operations and free capacity for other work. More than 90% of respondents reported gains in reliability and performance.

The figures include a 93% improvement in first-time-right performance, a 90% increase in asset availability and an 88% improvement in on-time delivery schedule adherence. The results are based on respondents’ own assessments.

IFS says AI-driven improvements in production throughput and quality assurance have saved more than half of employee time in key workflow areas. Companies are using that capacity for workforce safety, training and operational compliance, cited by 36% of respondents; asset performance and reliability, 35%; continuous process improvement, 26%; and market-share growth, 25%.

Frontline teams train digital workers

The research points to a growing role for frontline personnel in AI implementation. During the past 12 months, 43% of respondents said they had trained and introduced agentic digital workers into daily operations. A further 37% had upskilled colleagues to use industrial AI tools, while 36% had trained employees to collaborate with digital workers.

By comparison, executive leadership’s most common AI-related activity was improving management’s own AI literacy, cited by 41% of respondents. The report identifies leadership confidence, cited by 30%, as one of the main barriers to scaling AI use. Some 27% viewed AI literacy as the first vital step towards organisational readiness.

“The factory floor is moving at full speed. Workers see the operational insights, know their data better than anyone, and they know they need industrial-grade AI solutions to turn that expertise into action. The real challenge for leadership isn’t driving adoption, it’s having the insights to clear legacy roadblocks and delivering the secure industrial harness, data pipelines, and governance required to scale these wins safely and globally,” says Cathie Hall, Chief Product & Customer Officer at IFS.

Confidence exceeds controls

More than 70% of organisations said they were confident in their safety and data policies. However, the survey found significant gaps in control mechanisms for industrial AI.

Only 11% of respondents said their organisations had validated AI outputs for safety-, quality- or mission-critical processes. The same proportion had established controls for AI use with sensitive or export-controlled data. Just 4% had made human oversight or approval mandatory for AI-supported decisions.

The report also found that only 20% of organisations had embedded industrial AI in supply chain management or maintenance planning and MRO operations, despite the potentially high consequences of operational failures in these areas.

“Industrial operations are defined by speed and consequences. Every decision, every asset, every second compound. To compete, leadership must match the frontline’s pace. That means having Industrial AI at the heart of operations to support rapidly scaling agentic AI, enabling the safety, governance, and data controls that make rapid decision-making trustworthy and operationally sound. Companies that move now will compress decision cycles and extend competitive advantages. Leadership cannot afford to lag,” Hall says.