I have been looking forward to this week for a long time. Champions of Manufacturing 2026 is here, and I can say it with complete confidence: this is not the same company that stood on this stage a year ago.
It has been eighteen months since I joined QAD | Redzone. Last year at our Champions event, I shared my vision for the company and showed our customers where we were going. This week, I get to show them what we delivered, then step aside and let our customers tell the story themselves.
That is what has me most excited. We have more customers on the Champions stage than ever before, telling their stories and sharing their experiences, with over thirty Trailblazer Champions amid major transformations and company initiatives with real business outcomes and impact. learned. Different companies, different products, different places on the path, with one thing in common: they started. Our part in that keeps us humble. We built the technology and showed up. They did the hard work of changing how they work to better their businesses and create real competitive advantage, and they are the reason this event matters.
While our customers who will be with us in Chicago will get these stories firsthand, I’m so impressed with what they’ve accomplished that I want to highlight some of them:
Frank Homann at Molex looked at an ERP environment that had become too complex and moved to Adaptive ERP. Then, after all that, Molex chose QAD again for a new facility. That is what confidence looks like.
Joe and Ivan at Reyes put new capability directly into the hands of the people running their plants, and the change became real where manufacturing actually happens: on the floor.
Kevin Davis at AmSafe did not start by saying “we need an AI strategy.” He started with a business problem worth solving, applied our Champions, and proved the value. Kevin has a phrase I love: help people work smarter, not harder.
Three manufacturers, three different starting points: modernization, the frontline, a single business process. No one place is right to start. The right place is wherever you can make the biggest difference in your business. And more manufacturers are looking for that place right now, because the ground under all of us is moving faster than it ever has.
We know that every business is unique. Every business is at a different point. That’s the conversation we have rebuilt this company around. Partnering with our customers to meet them where they are in their journeys and help them take the first step. It’s not about technology; it’s about better manufacturing outcomes. Every announcement this week comes back to that one idea, and I couldn’t be more excited about what we are putting in our customers’ hands.
We now have one platform with four pillars, built for manufacturing: Adaptive ERP, Redzone, Supply Chain, and ChampionAI. Champion Assist and new Persona Champions put intelligence inside everyday ERP, from Procurement to Accounts Payable. New Redzone Champions put intelligence into the flow of frontline work, and our Better Together integration connects that frontline to the enterprise, shop floor to top floor.
Our Global Trade Compliance Champion brings agentic AI to tariffs and regulations that change faster than any team can track by hand.
That is a lot to take in, and I know it. So, we made it easy to explore. We launched a new website this week at qad.com, built around these Champions and the outcomes behind them. Spend a few minutes there, and you will see how each one fits together, and where your business could start.
One of our biggest breakthroughs this past year has been Lynx Champion. For decades, manufacturers were stuck with legacy ERP systems because of years of customization that nobody fully understood. Lynx uses agentic AI to read that code, separate technical debt from real differentiation, and turn a years-long modernization program into work measured in weeks. This is AI reinventing the ERP transformation itself, and it changes the economics of modernization for our whole industry.
Every one of those innovations is a step toward where we are going next: Manufacturing Intelligence. AI is powerful, but intelligence without context does not know how to run a manufacturing business. We do. Fifty years of manufacturing expertise, combined with manufacturing data and AI, enable you to see what is happening, understand what is constraining the outcome, decide, act within the systems where work happens, and prove it worked, across the environment you already have, not only ours. With NVIDIA as a centerpiece of our ecosystem, we are bringing it to life, and you can put your hands on it in the Expo Hall this week.
None of this happens alone, so let me close where I started. To our customers: thank you for trusting us, pushing us, and going first. We are honored to play a part in your success. To our partners, whose delivery expertise turns intelligence into outcomes on real factory floors: thank you.
A year ago, I told this audience where we were going. This week our customers are showing everyone how far manufacturing can go when you decide to move.
The Trailblazers have started. Now it’s your turn.
