CADDi Connect: What's next for Construction Manufacturing Innovations?

CADDi Connect brings manufacturing leaders together to compare how engineering, procurement, and production decisions are made across companies.

Following a well-attended session at CES 2026 that brought together senior manufacturing leaders across the U.S. and Japan, CADDi hosted a focused, invitation-only discussion at CONEXPO with executives from construction and heavy equipment manufacturers.

Greg Toornman, former VP at AGCO, joined Aaron Lober, VP of Marketing at CADDi, to host top decision-makers from construction and heavy equipment manufacturers. With participating companies including CNH, Kubota, and SANY, the room featured VP, CTO and director-level leaders. The session was conducted in both Japanese and English and structured as a cross-company discussion with participants from U.S. and Japanese organizations.

Shared Operational Constraints

Participants described how their teams manage core workflows tied to engineering data and production decisions. The group identified common constraints, including:

• Locating prior drawings across multiple systems before quoting
• Evaluating suppliers without accessible cost and performance history
• Planning production with data distributed across different platforms

These conditions slow cycle time, reduce cost accuracy, and increase production risk. Through the lens of these operational constraints, the attendees turned to the potential application of artificial intelligence.

Weighing the Value of AI-driven Workflows

The issue of fragmented engineering and manufacturing data limiting reuse of prior work and necessitating consistent decision-making was on the forefront of attendees’ minds. They discussed how emerging AI technology, like CADDi, can unify and analyze engineering data to support access to prior designs, supplier insights and production context, alleviating the challenges caused by this fragmentation.

One team complained about the extensive time  required to locate prior designs before quoting. Another outlined how challenging supplier decisions are when performance data is not connected to design requirements. All of the attendees found that AI could improve these shared issues.

As the discussion delved deeper into the potential benefits of AI integration, many participants expected that profound changes were on the horizon.

An executive in attendance offered his thoughts on this new era: “This is a huge paradigm shift for many organizations — and many will be left watching it unfold. By the time they realize what’s happening, it may already be too late.”

Join the Next CADDi Connect

CADDi executive Aaron Lober summarized the impact of our events: “CADDi has now hosted two successful events that prove the value of peer-to-peer dialogue for executives. In fact, our recent CADDi Connect demonstrated that these events bring manufacturing leaders together. As we saw with senior leaders from CNH, Kubota, and SANY, operational bottlenecks are consistent across regions and companies. CADDi Connect will continue alongside major industry events.” 

Our peer-to-peer discussions aim to enable:

• Open discussion of leadership-level operational challenges.
• Direct comparison of engineering, procurement and production workflows.
• Clear visibility into how other organizations address similar constraints.
• Faster application of ideas discussed in the room.
• Conversation with peers responsible for operational outcomes.

CADDi will continue using CADDi Connect alongside major industry events to facilitate these discussions. If you are interested, a new event is happening during Automate 2026 in Chicago. Secure your spot today!