Hexagon 2026 Report: Only 40% of Manufacturers Truly Connected

Most manufacturers say they are connected. The data on the shop floor tells a different story.

Manufacturers under pressure to scale output without adding headcount or facilities are betting on connected operations to close the productivity gap. But new research from Hexagon shows that being connected and being integrated are not the same thing, and the difference is costing quality teams hours every week and creating expensive rework late in production.

What was announced

On September 17, 2026, Hexagon's Manufacturing Intelligence Business Area released The State of Manufacturing Report 2026, commissioned by Hexagon and conducted by Dynata. The survey covered 511 professionals in U.S. manufacturing, from entry-level workers to the C-suite.

Headline findings:

• 77% describe their operations as fully or mostly connected.
• 40% report they are connected across design, production, quality and business systems.
• 39% report limited feedback between design, manufacturing and quality teams.
• 67% do not have data from most systems integrated into a single view.
• 67% lose six or more hours a week to measurement and inspection bottlenecks; 35% lose 11 hours or more.
• 59% now inspect on or near the shop floor; only 15% remain mostly or entirely lab based.

Manufacturers aren't wrong when they say they're connected. However, connected and integrated are two different things, and companies confident in their connectivity are still finding quality problems late and losing expertise between teams, and both get more expensive as production scales

Why this matters

For CIOs, CTOs and operations leaders, the report exposes a governance and data-integration problem, not a sensor problem. Confidence in data integration reaches 80% at executive level but drops to 33% on the shop floor — the widest single divide in the research. Adaptability to disruption follows the same pattern: 91% in the executive suite versus 62% among entry-level workers. Even lights-out operation is contested internally: 31% of executives say it already runs somewhere in the plant, but only 10% of senior managers agree.

The business cost is concentrated in quality: 43% say rework disrupts production schedules and 42% catch defects too late to act on them efficiently. Inspection has moved closer to production, but results often stay inside quality reports rather than reaching production teams and design engineers, so manufacturers keep identifying defects instead of preventing them.

Technical details

• Research sample: 511 U.S. manufacturing professionals surveyed by Dynata in July 2026.
• Scope of integration measured: design, production, quality, business systems, automation and operational data.
• Key metric — connectivity vs. integration: 77% claim connectivity, 40% claim end-to-end integration.
• Feedback loops: 39% report limited feedback between design, manufacturing and quality.
• Single pane of glass: 67% lack integrated multi-system visibility.
• Time loss: 67% lose 6+ hours per week to inspection bottlenecks; 35% lose 11+ hours.
• Inspection location shift: 59% inspect on/near the shop floor; 15% remain lab based.
• Hexagon approach: connect design, production, quality, automation and operational data so information moves between teams rather than staying with whoever produced it.

Softprom and Hexagon

Softprom is the official partner of Hexagon. Manufacturing and engineering teams can access Hexagon's Manufacturing Intelligence portfolio — including metrology, quality and production software — through Softprom's technical and licensing services.

This content was prepared as part of the Softprom DistriFlow project — an automated system for monitoring and adapting vendor news. Original source: original article.