Advancements in digital technology are unlocking exciting opportunities in manufacturing. Today, leading-edge digital technologies, such as AI, robotics and industrial automation, and digital twins, are crucial to enhancing Canadian manufacturers’ productivity and global competitiveness.
ICTC’s 2026 research, Accelerating Digital Technology Adoption in Canada’s Advanced Manufacturing Sector, delivered in partnership with Next Generation Manufacturing (NGen), sought to understand the current state of digital technology adoption in Canadian manufacturing and identify pathways to improve digital technology adoption.
The project resulted in the development of a series of five digital technology adoption roadmaps tailored to the following Canadian advanced manufacturing industries:
- Automotive and automotive parts
- Aerospace
- Biomanufacturing
- Fabricated metal products
- Food and beverage manufacturing
Through industry-specific case studies, benchmarking survey data, industry specific use-cases, return on investment (ROI) frameworks, change and risk management tools, and technical, strategic, and human-focused frameworks for technology adoption: the roadmaps highlight technical interdependencies and practical considerations for adopting digital technologies, including AI, big data analytics, cloud computing, cybersecurity, digital twins, sensors and Internet of Things (IoT), and robotics and industrial automation.
The Current State of Digital Technology Adoption & Productivity in Canadian Advanced Manufacturing
Overall productivity in Canadian manufacturing has been in a decline for over a decade. This decline in Canadian manufacturing is layered on top of a longstanding and acute national economic productivity crisis. As an R&D and capital-intensive economic sector, manufacturing plays an important role in the Canadian economy by promoting innovation, adding resiliency to the supply chain, and driving national economic competitiveness.
When it comes to delivering successful digital technology adoption projects, only 23% of Canadian manufacturers ICTC surveyed reported to have been fully successful in adopting digital technology in the past five years. 47% percent of manufacturers reported to only be partially successful in adopting digital technology, and perhaps most worryingly, 21% of manufacturers had made no attempt in the past five years to adopt new digital technologies.
As ICTC and NGen’s roadmaps show, Canadian manufacturers are already successfully adopting leading-edge digital technologies into their operations.
For example, in the food and beverage industry, manufacturers are adopting AI chatbots to assist maintenance personnel in repairing production machinery. In the automotive sector, one manufacturing plant is using quadrupedal robots (i.e., “robot dogs”) as roving facilities inspectors. And in aerospace manufacturing, digital twins are being used to design the next generation of Canadian aircraft and spacecraft.
The desire to improve profitability, meet customer expectations, and enhance quality were common justifications for Canadian manufactures adopting digital technologies.
However, even for Canadian manufacturers who have adopted digital technologies into their operations, the majority are only in the nascent stages of integrating the digital technologies together into mutually reinforcing tech stacks. 57% percent of Canadian manufacturers surveyed for the project reported to only be employing digital technologies piecemeal, across isolated applications, and only partially networked, with only 9% of Canadian manufacturers reported to have achieved advanced levels of digital technology integration, using interconnected stacks of digital technologies predictively and to enable autonomous decision-making across their operations.
Advancing Digital Technology Adoption in Canadian Manufacturing
Canada’s manufacturers stand to benefit by adopting more digital technology into their manufacturing operations. When successfully adopted, and integrated into a manufacturing enterprise, leading-edge digital technologies help enhance profitability, meet customers’ increasing expectations, and improve quality. Improving the level of digital technology uptake by manufacturers can help reverse a long-term decline in Canadian manufacturing productivity, while helping to address Canada’s national economic productivity issues.
ICTC and NGen’s Accelerating Digital Technology Adoption in Canada’s Advanced Manufacturing Sector roadmap series provides all Canadian manufacturers, and small- and medium-sized manufacturers in particular, the industry-specific case studies, frameworks, tools, and use-cases needed to help accelerate digital technology adoption throughout Canadian manufacturing.
Erik Henningsmoen is a senior research and policy analyst with the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC). He is the author of the ICTC report Accelerating Digital Transformation in Canada's Advanced Manufacturing Sector and the accompanying series of five digital technology adoption roadmaps.
