CSCOs need plant leaders to close the manufacturing transformation gap

Manufacturing is a future growth engine for enterprises—and is also the constraint that limits organizations from achieving that goal. The disconnect between corporate vision and how factories operate is where leadership ambitions get stuck. The obstacle? Engrained behaviors and ways of working that reward local optimization or CapEx constraints that defer technology investment, and resistance from leadership.

For chief supply chain officers (CSCOs), the misalignment between their transformation aspirations and their plant leaders’ short-term objectives is becoming a hindrance to transformation. Gartner research finds that when manufacturing operations report to the CSCO, organizations are 68% more likely to have stronger alignment with the broader supply chain. Yet manufacturing reports to the CSCO only 29% of the time. At the same time, only 17% of CSCOs are prioritizing expanding their scope of operations to new areas such as manufacturing and IT into new areas such as manufacturing and IT.

That gap matters because manufacturing operating model change depends on plant leaders’ buy-in for new ways of working and the technologies that support them. If they remain anchored to site-level habits, even the most ambitious network strategy will lose momentum.

Make technology useful before asking for belief

Plant leaders often resist abstract enterprise mandates that do not take into consideration the realities of how factories operate. A plant leader already fighting downtime may hear an AI proposal as another experiment that will consume scarce engineering capacity.

CSCOs should start with a visible pain point. A maintenance team, for example, could use real-time equipment data to create an early-warning signal for welding quality issues. The goal is practical: help operators see a defect risk earlier, prevent scrap and gain confidence that the technology solves a problem they recognize.

Adoption is easier when cross-functional teams include IT, operations and site employees who understand the process. Seed funding can help these teams move quickly without forcing every pilot through a full capital request. Then, once a plant owns the solution, resistance often weakens because the technology feels practical rather than imposed.

Stop accepting maturity as an excuse

Some plant leaders argue that their sites are too immature for transformation. That claim can be valid when foundational systems are missing. It can also become a convenient reason to delay change.

One manufacturing site with aging machinery and 35% overall equipment effectiveness asked for years to build maturity before joining the transformation effort, citing a lack of investment over the last decade as cause for delay. Leadership took a different route. The site received a focused investment to improve essential maintenance activities. Teams used value stream mapping to find hidden bottlenecks and remove avoidable friction. By reinforcing fundamentals, within a few months throughput and sales rose by nearly two-thirds, with no new capital equipment.

The lesson for CSCOs is practical: maturity should be proven through progress on operational basics, not claimed as a barrier. Sites that demonstrate discipline can earn more advanced investment, and those that cannot should receive targeted support to fix the fundamentals first.

Reframe the investment conversation

Traditional ROI models can incentivize plant leaders to reject anything that lacks fast savings. That creates a dangerous bias against projects that build capacity, improve resilience or free expert time for higher-value work.

Consider an engineering team buried in documentation. Using generative AI to create a complete maintenance manual may appear modest in a conventional ROI review. However, this type of project can take mere minutes and save months of engineering effort. 

Leaders should also prioritize tempering or changing the perception of automation as a job killer. This can be accomplished by showing how it can help absorb a significant increase in manufacturing, connecting the investment to business expansion.

Use governance to end site-by-site drift

Gartner research finds 62% of respondents cite silos and conflicting goals as the biggest barrier to aligning manufacturing with supply chain needs over the next several years. CSCOs cannot solve that through persuasion alone.

They need governance that connects site metrics to network objectives. A plant can still own execution, but performance should be judged against enterprise outcomes as well as local efficiency. Data from newer, smarter factories can help by showing how changes inside one facility alter service reliability or capacity elsewhere in the network.

Manufacturing transformation requires more than central slogans or local heroics. CSCOs need to make technology tangible and fund investments that protect future growth. Ultimately, transformation only sticks when plant leaders can turn enterprise ambition into day-to-day operating discipline.

About the author

Simon Jacobson is a VP Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain Practice. Simon’s research focuses on converging the strategies for manufacturing, digitization, automation, and workforce development.

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