Last week, I joined a few hundred fellow Mainers at The Point in South Portland for the Manufacturers Association of Maine’s 2026 Summit and Gubernatorial Forum. It was, by any reasonable measure, a productive day: a packed agenda, a sharp Advanced Manufacturing Panel, a Youth Panel focused squarely on how Maine manufacturers can attract and hire the next generation of workers, and a Gubernatorial Forum that put Maine’s next governor squarely in front of the people who literally build things in this state.

I walked away energized, and I walked away with a question I can’t shake:  did we spend the day talking about where Maine manufacturing is going, or where it already is?

How the day was on point

The themes that ran through the morning were the right ones. “ROI” was a quiet drumbeat across the panels, the idea that digital investments have to earn their place on the shop floor, not just show up there. Nick MacArthur from Elmet Technologies and Barry Doyle from Kennebec Technologies grounded the digital transformation conversation in the messy reality of mid-size manufacturers: phased rollouts, imperfect data, and, as MacArthur put it, “digital transformation doesn’t require perfection.” It requires starting.

Elmet’s automation engineering department showed that the operational layer is moving. So did a recurring data point that nobody on the panel could ignore: when speakers asked how many people in the room were under 40, the show of hands made the workforce question impossible to wave away.

That same ROI lens deserves to travel beyond the shop floor. Digital marketing, the website, the SEO footprint, the content, and case studies that show buyers what you actually do are, for most Maine manufacturers, the cheapest and most measurable customer-acquisition lever they own. It’s also one of the most under-invested. If we’re going to hold a CNC upgrade to a return-on-investment standard, the digital storefront deserves the same scrutiny, and it usually shows a return faster than the machine in the corner.

And the human thread hands-on experience as a kid, the toys we tinkered with, the mentors who pulled us into the trade, was the day’s most emotionally honest moment. Maine manufacturing’s pipeline is, and always has been, a relationship business.

Where the conversation fell short

Here’s where I want to push, respectfully, because the moment calls for it: the conversation happening across Maine manufacturing right now, not just at this summit, but on shop floors, in trade groups, and in trade press is strong on digital transformation as a current-state problem, and thin on what comes after it.

Almost every “future” conversation I heard on the floor, in the panels, over lunch was really a present-tense conversation about catching up. ERP modernization. First-time data capture. Replacing paper travelers and getting MES into the building. That work is essential. It is also table stakes. The skepticism about “big brother watching” the floor is understandable, but it’s a 2018 concern shaping a 2026 agenda and holding back the broader discussion.

The most telling pattern, though, was how often AI got skirted. During discussions, AI was sometimes referenced as an afterthought — a workforce worry, a cybersecurity concern, something the younger generation will figure out. Still, some speakers missed the opportunity to articulate this as a strategic capability that their business is actively building. Out-of-state competitors aren’t waiting to feel comfortable with AI; they’re piloting it in quoting, scheduling, quality inspection, and customer-facing content right now. We know this because some of our own clients are already doing it. Maine manufacturers can either lead that conversation or inherit its consequences, but staying neutral is a huge risk.

The conversation Maine manufacturers should be having in 2026, the one I hoped for, is about what gets built on top of that digital foundation:

• AI-driven quality and predictive maintenance, where vision systems and edge models catch defects upstream of the inspector, not after.
• Closed-loop scheduling and supply-chain orchestration that uses the data we’re finally collecting, instead of just visualizing it on a dashboard nobody opens.
• Generative design and digital twins for the small-batch, high-mix shops that dominate Maine’s manufacturing base.
• Cybersecurity and data sovereignty as a competitive advantage, not a compliance checkbox, especially for the defense and medical work happening in this state.
• A workforce strategy that treats AI literacy as the new shop math, not an optional add-on for the engineering team.

Where the conversation should go

Let me reiterate, and be clear: by no means is any of this a knock on MAME. The association convenes the right people, and the day proved it. The opportunity belongs to all of us, every association, every shop, every supplier, every marketing partner like Page One, to widen the aperture of the conversation, so that what Maine manufacturers are talking about as an industry is one year ahead of what they’re wrestling with on the floor, not one year behind it.

A few places we as an industry could push that conversation forward at MAME’s summit, sure, but also in every roundtable, podcast, panel, and trade article we get our hands on:

• Make room for a dedicated “What’s Next” conversation on applied AI, autonomous systems, and digital twins, and put at least one out-of-state operator in front of Maine manufacturers to show what’s already in production elsewhere.
• Treat the workforce question and the technology question as one conversation. The jobs we’re recruiting the next generation into in 2030 don’t exist on most Maine floors today, and we’re going to have a hard time selling them on a future we haven’t built yet.
• Bring the buyers into the room. Primes, OEMs, and defense integrators are setting the digital expectations Maine suppliers will have to meet, and the sooner we hear it directly from them, the sooner we can adjust.
• Push our policy conversations past workforce and tax. The state-level posture on AI procurement, data infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing R&D credits will shape the next decade. Those questions belong in every gubernatorial forum, every legislative briefing, and every association.

The bottom line

The summit was a great day for Maine manufacturing, and credit where it’s due, MAME built the room that let this conversation happen at all. The opportunity now belongs to the rest of us in the industry to make sure the conversation we keep having between summits is sharper than the one we walked into. The shops that win the next decade won’t be the ones that finished their digital transformation; they’ll be the ones that treated it as a starting line and didn’t flinch when AI came up.

At Page One Web Solutions, that’s the conversation we’re already having with our manufacturing partners every week, connecting the dots between an ROI-minded shop floor, an ROI-minded marketing strategy, and a serious answer to the AI question. I’d love to see it become the conversation our whole industry is having, in every room where Maine manufacturers gather.

Alexis Crawford is Director of Strategic Innovation at Page One Web Solutions, where she helps Maine-based manufacturers and service businesses translate digital strategy into measurable outcomes. A HubSpot Certified Trainer, Claude AI Certified user, and seasoned RevOps professional, she works at the intersection of go-to-market systems, AI adoption, and revenue operations — helping organizations adopt modern tools without losing sight of the numbers that matter.