Top manufacturing challenges to overcome in 2026

Manufacturing outlook for 2026

The manufacturing outlook for 2026 includes several key challenges that will shape the manufacturing industry over the next twelve months. Manufacturers will increasingly turn to digital tools to help them overcome a number of challenges, including the recruitment and retention of skilled staff and the increasing demand for customization.

In this blog, we look at the top three manufacturing challenges for 2026 and how DriveWorks design automation, 3D product configurator, and CPQ for manufacturing solutions help manufacturers to overcome those challenges. We’ll also revisit this topic throughout the year in our monthly LinkedIn newsletter, The Manufacturing Technology Advantage. Subscribe here to get each new edition delivered straight to your inbox.

2026 manufacturing challenges

With a backdrop of increasing labor and energy costs, we’ve identified three key challenges for manufacturers of custom products:

1. Balancing customization complexity with cost and efficiency
2. Skilled labor shortage
3. Quality assurance challenges

Balancing customization complexity with cost and efficiency

Increasing customer demand for complex customization puts a strain on traditional manufacturing processes, leading to increased engineering effort, complex quoting, longer lead times, and lower margins.

DriveWorks technology enables manufacturers to accurately configure complex custom products, apply accurate real-time pricing, and automatically create documents and data for sales and manufacturing.

Using DriveWorks, manufacturers remove bottlenecks, reduce costly errors, accelerate sales cycles, and improve business-wide efficiency and productivity.

Skilled labor shortage

The manufacturing industry faces a continued shortage of experienced engineers, combined with large amounts of engineering knowledge concentrated in a small number of employees, some of who are close to retirement age. This is often referred to as “brain drain”.

It’s easy to get started with DriveWorks as you don’t need any programming skills. For example, the rules builder functionality inside DriveWorksXpress uses standard Excel functions that you’ll already be familiar with.

DriveWorks also enables manufacturers to capture the wealth of knowledge held by engineers in a structured way. Turning knowledge into rules-based logic ensures manufacturers maintain engineering knowledge and quality standards.

Quality assurance challenges

Due to the unique nature of each custom order, ensuring consistent levels of quality is difficult. Manual processes lead to higher error rates and rework, customer dissatisfaction, and complex documentation.

The rules-based technology in DriveWorks software guarantees design standards are met at every stage of the process, ensuring design consistency and quality for all product configurations, regardless of complexity.

Consistent product quality enables manufacturers to deliver highly customized products that meet quality standards and regulations across different regions and countries.

Learn more with our manufacturing technology webinars

DriveWorks technology is used every day by manufacturers across a range of industries all over the world. 

Our manufacturing technology webinar series is a great way to learn about the key concepts of DriveWorks. It’s designed to demonstrate how manufacturers can benefit from DriveWorks technology solutions across their operations.  

Each webinar is hosted live by DriveWorks technical experts, and attendees will gain practical insights into implementing DriveWorks technology to overcome common manufacturing challenges.