Ten years ago, a well-run industrial supply chain had one job: be cheaper than the competition’s. Factories went where labour was affordable, energy was a rounding error, and inventory was a cost to be squeezed out. That logic built some of Europe’s most successful companies. It is now coming apart.
Tariffs and geopolitical tension have turned sourcing decisions into strategic risks. Carbon prices and energy volatility are rewriting the economics of where things get made. And AI is moving into planning, procurement and production faster than most operating models were designed to absorb. The question facing industrial leaders is no longer how to optimise the system they have. It is how to keep changing it without losing control.
That question sits at the centre of PwC’s work with industrial clients, and it is why the firm has joined the Industrial Future Summit 2026 in Stockholm as an official partner.
From efficiency to adaptability
For PwC, reinvention is less a strategy slide than an operational challenge. Redrawing a manufacturing footprint, dual-sourcing critical components or bringing AI into demand planning all look straightforward in a board presentation. The difficulty starts on the shop floor, in supplier contracts and in ERP systems built for a more predictable world.
This is where PwC’s Operations Transformation practice concentrates its effort. Led globally by Stefan Schrauf, Global Supply Chain and EMEA Operations Lead, the team works with manufacturers on supply chain strategy, footprint and sourcing decisions, and the Industry 4.0 and digital capabilities that make them work in practice. Schrauf has spent more than 20 years helping companies across industries turn supply chain strategy into operating reality.
The approach rests on a simple observation: companies rarely fail at reinvention because they chose the wrong strategy. They fail because the organisation underneath it was not built to move.
Why Stockholm, why now
Few places concentrate the industrial side of this debate the way the Industrial Future Summit does. The Summit brings together around 400 decision-makers from Europe’s industrial companies, alongside the startups and investors building the technologies those companies will depend on. The CEOs of Mercedes-Benz and Saab are among the speakers, and Reinvention is one of the event’s core themes.
For a firm whose work depends on understanding what industrial leaders are actually wrestling with, that mix matters. The Summit is hosted by Combient, which connects large industrial companies with startups that can help them move faster, so the conversations here tend to be practical rather than theoretical: what to build, what to buy, and what to stop doing.
PwC will be visible across the programme. Stefan Schrauf joins Saab CEO Micael Johansson and AI entrepreneur Peter Sarlin in the closing session of the Main Stage, and the firm also hosts the side event “Beyond the Hype – Navigating Industrial AI Transformation” on Partner Day, 10 November: https://www.lyyti.in/Navigating_IndustrialAI_Transformation
A partnership with roots
The Summit partnership builds on a long-standing strategic relationship between PwC and Combient focusing on future-proofing Nordic industry, business model reinvention, AI integration, and supply-chain resilience.
