DALLAS — Today’s manufacturing landscape will not simply reward the largest companies, but rather those that can learn, adapt and act. Meanwhile, those unwilling to evolve will fade into irrelevance, according to QAD | Redzone CEO Sanjay Brahmawar.
"The risk of not acting is one you cannot afford,” Brahmawar said. "Legacy systems yield reports, not decisions. They demand complexity, not clarity. When you stand still, you lose talent. The cost of standing still won’t be measured in dollars; it will be measured in relevance.”
Echoing Brahmawar’s call to action, QAD | Redzone’s Champions of Manufacturing event in Dallas stressed reimagining manufacturing ERP around three themes: transitioning from static data to AI-enabled operations, balancing automation with human insight and achieving measurable ROI in weeks instead of years.
QAD | Redzone hosts Champions of Manufacturing in Dallas, Texas.Nolan Beilstein
Amit Sharma, the president of manufacturing ERP at QAD | Redzone, summarized the company’s approach as a “system of action” that expands ERP’s legacy function to a solution that can sense, decide and respond in real time.
"Let’s say you’re trying to sell something, and you know you will not be able to meet [a] production schedule because your suppliers have told you that they cannot provide the material in time,” Sharma said. "The system is able to identify those things at every transactional moment. The system is not just collecting the information and storing it. It is trying to figure out what you're trying to do and what information you need. That is ‘system of action.’”
QAD | Redzone supports this shift with Champion AI, an agentic artificial intelligence engine that powers the Redzone Connected Workforce and QAD Adaptive ERP software.
Sharma gave the example of a supplier sending Excel files via email that require changes in the ERP. He explained that Champion AI can extract the information from the email and update the system automatically.
"Imagine you're producing something and tariffs change,” Sharma said. "Your entire costing model has changed and you have to update the entire thing internally. [Champion AI] will match item by item, it'll match the supplier and it will check with the user.”
QAD | Redzone hosts Champions of Manufacturing in Dallas, Texas.Nolan Beilstein
Practical implications extend beyond operational updates. Steve Lucas, the CEO of software developer Boomi, promoted the potential of human-AI collaboration, suggesting that manufacturing should prioritize practical AI that enables a “super human.”
Building on this idea, Sharma noted that ERPs were originally designed to optimize a company’s operations. However, over time, the end users became secondary to IT departments tasked with translating technical jargon and dictating the proper use.
"That [worker] empowerment has gone because there's this middle layer,” Sharma said. "Our softwares do not expect a heavy IT department. Everything you see in our software is based on the feedback we receive from the people who are working on those lines and on shop floors — not from the IT people.”
QAD | Redzone claims that its customers can achieve ROI in weeks, not years, through a 90-day implementation model. The company meets that timeframe by using AI to facilitate data migration and by relying on predefined, templatized implementations tailored to different customer types, such as automotive suppliers or manufacturers in the food & beverage and life sciences sectors. The company admitted that worker training still requires meaningful time, but said its digital learning tools can accelerate onboarding.
QAD | Redzone CEO Sanjay Brahmawar (left) interviews former NFL quarterback Troy Aikman at Champions of Manufacturing in Dallas, Texas.
For example, Coil Specialist — a Texas-based manufacturer with 67 frontline employees — reported a 37% increase in productivity in 90 days on its HVAC refrigeration product focus line after adopting QAD Redzone Connected Workforce. Meanwhile, Brunswick Boat Group — a recreational boat manufacturer with nine facilities across the U.S. and Mexico — credited QAD Enterprise Quality Management System for bringing data from each site into a single, centralized database.
The efficiency gains illustrate the operational benefits of modernized ERP systems. However, attracting a workforce accustomed to advanced tools may prove just as critical to staying relevant, as Brahmawar warned.
"There’s a lot of talk about manufacturing coming back to the U.S.,” Sharma said. "Do you see today's generation working on that shop floor with tools that were designed 70 years ago? Look at the contrast on your phone. You're using all those applications, which are super intuitive and give you empowerment. Anybody would take a job where it’s easier to do that work versus working with those tools.”