Going into JEC this year, I told myself I’d try to see more.
That was the plan, at least.
Last year, my first time, I felt like I barely scratched the surface. There’s so much happening at JEC, 2 gigantic halls, so many technologies, so many things you feel like you should see, that it’s easy to leave thinking you missed half of it.
So this year, I came in thinking I’d do it differently.
Walk more. Explore more. Take it all in properly.
But that’s not really what happened.
Because once the event actually started, we were busy. Really busy.
Our booth was full most of the time, back-to-back conversations, demos running almost continuously, people stopping by between meetings. We even had a trivia game going, which turned out to be a surprisingly good way to start some interesting conversations. It brought people in for something light, but often led into much deeper discussions about what they’re actually dealing with in their operations.
And in between all that, there were meetings at other booths, quick catch-ups in the aisles, and the occasional few minutes to grab a coffee, or if you were lucky, a macaron, before heading into the next conversation (we were Paris, don’t judge me).
So no, I didn’t see everything this year either.
But I think I saw what mattered more.
What stood out to me wasn’t a specific technology or one impressive demo.
It was the consistency of what people were saying.
Different companies. Different sizes. Different parts of the value chain.
But the same underlying tension kept coming up.
Not in a dramatic way. No one was saying things were failing.
But there was a kind of quiet friction in how people described their day-to-day.
One conversation would start with something like:
“We’re growing fast…”
Another:
“We’re trying to ramp up…”
Another:
“We’ve invested a lot in new capabilities…”
And almost inevitably, somewhere along the way, it would land on:
“…but it’s getting harder to keep everything aligned.”
That word—aligned—came up more than I expected.
Not efficiency. Not cost. Not even automation.
Alignment.
Materials, machines, people, priorities.
Everything moving together, at the same time, in the right sequence.
And the more operations grow, the harder that becomes.
One person described it in a way that stuck with me:
“We don’t have a single big problem. We just have a lot of small misalignments.”
That’s exactly what it felt like across many of the conversations.
Nothing is fundamentally broken.
But things aren’t flowing the way they should.
A big part of that, I think, is the pressure to ramp up.
It came up again and again.
Not just growing but growing faster.
Taking on more orders. Increasing output. Expanding across sites.
And doing all of that without losing control.
Because ramp-up isn’t just about capacity.
It’s about coordination.
What used to be manageable with experience and manual planning starts to feel… tight.
Less margin for error. Less room to adjust.
And that’s where the cracks start to show, not in the machines, but in how everything is planned around them.
We had a lot of these conversations right at the booth.
People would come over after hearing about what we’re doing, or sometimes just out of curiosity, and the discussion would naturally shift toward how they currently plan and schedule their production.
And what I found interesting is that very few people described their process as “bad.”
It was more like:
“It works… but it’s getting harder.”
Spreadsheets that have grown over time.
Planning logic that lives in someone’s head.
Constant adjustments throughout the day.
A lot of effort going into keeping things on track.
And when you’re in it every day, that becomes normal.
Until you step back and realize how much of it is reactive.
There was one conversation where someone said something like:
“We spend most of our time fixing the plan, not following it.”
It wasn’t said as a complaint. More like an observation.
But it summed up a lot of what I had been hearing.
Because planning, in many cases, isn’t really planning anymore.
It’s continuous adjustment.
And the more complex the operation, the more constant that becomes.
At the same time, you can clearly see how much progress has been made on the visibility side.
More systems are connected.
More data is available.
More dashboards than ever.
But that created an interesting contrast in a few conversations.
People can see more.
But that doesn’t always make it easier to decide what to do next.
One person told me:
“We know roughly what’s happening everywhere… but it still takes time to figure out how to respond.”
That stayed with me.
Because it highlights something we don’t always talk about.
Visibility is important, but it’s not the same as decision-making.
This is also where the conversation around AI started to feel more grounded.
Yes, it’s everywhere right now. You hear it constantly, but I think that as a buzzword the novelty had worn out and now manufacturers are actually interested in understanding how it helps.
People I spoke with weren’t looking at it as a trend, they were looking at it as a question:
“Where does this actually help us?”
And almost every time, the discussion became practical when it touched planning and scheduling.
Because that’s where everything comes together.
Every constraint.
Every delay.
Every dependency.
It all converges there.
And it’s also where decisions need to be made continuously—not once a day, but throughout the day.
Something else I noticed this year is that automation is starting to be talked about differently.
Of course, there’s still a lot happening on the shop floor, new machines, new processes, more automation in production.
But more and more, the conversation is shifting to a different layer.
The layer where decisions are made.
I had a conversation with someone who said:
“We’ve automated a lot of our production, but planning still depends on excel and a few people who just ‘know’ how things should work.”
And that kind of experience is incredibly valuable.
But it’s also hard to scale.
Especially when everything around it is becoming more complex, more dynamic, and more interconnected.
Looking back at the event, I think what made this year feel different for me is that I wasn’t focused on what was being presented.
I was focused on what people were actually dealing with.
The small frustrations.
The workarounds.
The effort it takes to keep everything moving.
And once you start paying attention to that, you realize how consistent it is across the industry.
Even the lighter moments like grabbing something quick between meetings, stepping outside for a few minutes of air, or having a short conversation that wasn’t planned, somehow connected back to the same themes.
It’s a busy event, but it’s also a very human one.
Everyone is there because they’re trying to learn something new or solve something.
And when you talk to enough people, the patterns become hard to ignore.
If I compare this year to my first JEC, I don’t think I saw more.
I think I understood more.
Last year, I was looking at innovation.
This year, I was listening to reality.
And the reality is that manufacturing isn’t struggling with a lack of capability.
It’s struggling with keeping everything aligned as complexity increases.
When I left Paris this time, I didn’t feel like I had missed out.
I felt like I had seen the right things.
Not necessarily the most impressive ones, but the most relevant ones.
The conversations that stay with you a bit longer.
The ones that don’t end when the meeting does.
And if there’s one thing I’m taking from this year, it’s this:
The challenge isn’t adding more.
It’s making everything that already exists work together, continuously, and under pressure.
Because that’s what ramp-up really looks like in practice.
Not a single big step forward.
But a lot of small decisions, happening all the time.
And trying to keep them all aligned.
