From Pilot to Production: Real-Time Context for AI in the Manufacturing Supply Chain
Webinar Speaker: Donald Farmer, TDWI Research Fellow
Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2026
Time: 9:00 a.m. PT / 12:00 p.m. ET
Manufacturers are moving quickly to apply AI across the supply chain. Demand forecasting, inventory optimization, dynamic pricing, and aftermarket service are all active areas of investment. Agentic AI extends the ambition: systems that not only predict outcomes but act on them.
Yet many initiatives stall at the pilot stage, often because of the data foundation itself. Models and agents must make operational decisions using data that is processed in batches, arrives late, and is separated from the business context held in core enterprise systems. An agent working from yesterday's data cannot respond to today's supply chain.
Success depends on real-time context: trusted, governed data, unified with operational signals, and available to AI at the moment decisions are made. In this session, TDWI research fellow Donald Farmer is joined by experts from SAP and Databricks to examine how manufacturers are closing the gap.
Drawing on real-world supply chain scenarios, from anticipating OEM orders to pricing thousands of product variants to servicing connected products, the panel explores what separates initiatives that reach production from those that remain pilots.
The session offers practical guidance both for teams scaling established machine learning and for those preparing for agentic AI.
Attendees will learn:
- Why real-time business context determines whether supply chain AI reaches production
- How trusted enterprise data combines with operational and IoT data to support agentic decisions
- Where manufacturers are finding value today, from demand planning to aftermarket service
- What distinguishes agentic AI from established machine learning in supply chain operations
- How to assess whether a data foundation is ready for real-time decision-making