Welcome to Manufacturing Minute!

I'm glad you're here.

Let's get to it.

But first, a sponsored ad for a cool event:

A small group of senior ops leaders is getting inside Owens Corning's R&D center next month.

It'll be a working conversation with people who are actually wrestling with how Industrial AI changes the way teams operate day-to-day.
]
The room will be COOs, senior manufacturing and supply chain leaders, CEOs... anyone who's growth-constrained by their current operations or actively rethinking their operating model for what's next.

Just hard questions, real talk, and peers who are actually building the future.

If you or someone in your network sits in that seat and is wrestling with decision velocity, complexity, or scaling constraints... this is worth the time.

Register here: https://blog.lnsresearch.com/the-coo-council-meeting-feb-2026

🚨In the News

NVIDIA and Eli Lilly just announced a $1 billion AI lab for drug discovery and production.

A billion dollars. That's not a pilot program.

Here's what catches my eye as a manufacturing guy:

Pharma has always been where manufacturing tech goes to get validated at scale. If AI-driven production optimization works for molecules with FDA staring over your shoulder, it'll work for your widget.

🏭 Manufacturing Minute: The speed of now

I've lived through a few "big changes" in manufacturing.

ERP rollouts. Lean transformations. The cloud wars. Each one felt seismic at the time.

This is different.

Not because the tech is shinier. Because the speed is unprecedented. And the breadth of impact touches everything—how we design, make, sell, hire, train.

Here's the tactical reality most miss:

Big companies are paralyzed by this. Committees. Approvals. Legacy systems that fight every new integration. They're built for stability, not speed.

Small and mid-market manufacturers? You're built for exactly this moment.

No 18-month approval cycles. No architecture review boards. No "let's pilot it in one plant for two years."

You can move. Now.

The tools that used to require enterprise budgets and armies of consultants? Available. Affordable. Often free to start.

One tactical move this week: Pick ONE problem your team complains about daily. Find a solution that costs under $5K. Implement it in 30 days. Learn. Repeat.

That's how you ride the wave instead of getting crushed by it.

The meteor's coming either way. Might as well build a spaceship.

What's the one thing slowing you down that shouldn't be?

As promised, tactical manufacturing in a minute,

Ryan