138 Strong partnerships drive scalable impact INTERVIEW Bosch’s Norbert Jung and Microsoft’s Rupert Stuetzle share with Jacqui Griffiths how an ecosystem approach to AI unlocks measurable value across manufacturing operations A cross the world, manufacturers face mounting pressure to boost productivity, innovate faster and stay competitive in an increasingly volatile environment. Agentic AI is helping individual users to do more – but according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 95 per cent of cases it still fails to deliver economic impact for the business. For Norbert Jung, CEO of Bosch Connected Industry, and Rupert Stuetzle, general manager of EMEA manufacturing and mobility at Microsoft, it’s the quality of the AI program – not the quantity of agents deployed – that counts. A combination of technology, knowledge and context is the only way to deliver meaningful results. What changes are you seeing in the way manufacturers approach AI? RS: We’re seeing a sense of urgency in the companies we talk to. Two or three years ago, AI was mainly a topic for experimentation, but now this is changing. Companies are facing a lot of challenges – cost pressure, competitive pressure, regulation, disruptions in the supply chain – and they are looking for solutions. They’re no longer looking to experiment with AI; they want to know it will deliver impact at scale. The question is, how can we achieve real business impact? Every larger company has AI pilot initiatives. The challenge for manufacturers is how to get those pilots to production and implement them at scale in a realworld factory. Why are so many AI deployments failing to deliver business value? NJ: There are several reasons, from slow time to value to limited scalability. We often see a pilot-to-production gap, where companies think the pilot will do the job, but when they start to roll it out, things become more difficult. Pilots don’t immediately show the costs of operating, maintaining, integrating and scaling those agents, and the change management needed to drive user adoption. What is the ideal foundation to enable AI at scale? NJ: Strong partnerships are essential. At Bosch, we compared self-build deployment models with those involving partners who have industrial domain know-how, AI competence and data. We found that firms working with an ecosystem of partners can deliver value 74 per cent faster than those that go it alone. They will also typically yield 25 per cent more value, with 30 per cent less cost. What’s the best way to measure the success of agentic AI, and how can manufacturers achieve it? NJ: We see a lot of companies that pride themselves on the number of agents they have deployed – but success with AI is not about resource consumption; it’s about economic outcome. To evaluate that, you need a scalable system that produces trustworthy operational intelligence and measurable economic impact.
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