The Missing Link: Why Most AI Initiatives Never Reach the Shop Floor - And How Leaders Close the Gap

Rene Grywnow’s 5-Minute Business Punch · Jun 18, 2026 · 7m

Part I argued the future of AI value lives on the factory floor, not in the cloud. The problem? Most of it never gets there. For every pilot showcased at a trade fair, a quiet graveyard fills with experiments that worked in the lab and died on contact with a real production line.

The 2025–2026 data is sobering: 80%+ of AI projects fail to reach production (double the IT failure rate), 42% of organisations abandoned most AI initiatives in 2025 (up from 17%), and 46% of proof-of-concepts were scrapped before delivering value. The root causes are rarely the algorithms, they’re fragmented data…