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Episode Summary
Sanjay Brahmawar, CEO of QAD | Redzone, joins Danny Gonzales to talk about pace as a leadership choice, the real barriers to manufacturing modernization, and why Champion AI is designed to amplify frontline workers rather than replace them. With 500,000+ open manufacturing jobs in the US, Sanjay argues the opportunity isn't headcount reduction — it's making existing workers 3 to 4x more productive. He unpacks why 95% of AI projects fail to drive real outcomes, what separates manufacturers who win with technology from those who stall, and why the genie is out of the bottle whether you're ready or not.
About the Guest
Sanjay Brahmawar is the CEO of QAD | Redzone, a platform transforming manufacturing from a system of record to a system of action — where every employee, machine, and decision drives outcome. The platform is maniacally focused on mid-market manufacturers between $200M and $10B in revenue. Sanjay started his career assembling engines on a shop floor and brings 25+ years of technology implementation experience across ERP, data, and integration systems. His agentic platform, Champion AI, is embedded directly into QAD's ERP and RedZone connected workforce products rather than layered on top.
Key Takeaways
Resources & People Mentioned
Episode Breakdown
Sanjay Brahmawar has spent his career at the intersection of enterprise software and the factory floor, from assembling engines early in his career to leading QAD | Redzone as CEO today. In this episode of Industry Next, he makes the case that manufacturing modernization is not fundamentally a technology problem. It is a leadership problem, and specifically, a problem of pace.
Pace Is a Leadership Choice, Not a Byproduct
Most manufacturing organizations are not failing because they lack strategy or purpose. They are failing because they cannot execute at pace.
“The world doesn’t hold still, your competition doesn’t hold still,” Sanjay says. “Pace of execution, pace of decision-making, pace of delivering innovation to your clients… it is so important today to not only survive, but most importantly, to compete and win.”
The challenge is that pace rarely builds itself. Organizations accumulate what Sanjay calls “sludge,” the inertia, the consensus-seeking, the reluctance to take hard decisions, and the good intentions at the top never translate into speed at the operational level. Removing that sludge, he argues, is one of the most underrated responsibilities a leader carries.
This applies directly to manufacturing modernization. Manufacturing is historically slow to adopt technology, and for legitimate reasons. Plants run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There is no luxury of downtime to implement new systems. As Sanjay puts it, implementing change in a manufacturing environment is “literally changing the wings while the aircraft is flying.” It demands careful planning, minimal disruption, and maximum impact from every change made.
Champion AI: Augmenting Workers, Not Replacing Them
QAD | Redzone’s approach to manufacturing AI starts with a number: nearly half a million open manufacturing jobs in the United States today. That context shapes everything about how Sanjay thinks about AI on the shop floor.
“With ChampionAI, we’re thinking about how we make these frontline workers champions,” he explains. “The agents we’re producing are here to augment the human being on the shop floor, to amplify their potential so that they are 3 to 4X more effective, more productive.”
ChampionAI is organized around three buckets. The first is persona-based agents designed around specific roles: the production planner, the plant operator, the scheduler. These agents handle the background data work that currently consumes hours of a worker’s day, freeing them to focus on decisions and execution.
The second bucket targets the P&L directly. Inventory carrying costs rank among the top five cost drivers for mid-market manufacturers, many of whom operate on margins of 6 to 10 percent. QAD | Redzone’s inventory agent adjusts replenishment levels end to end, balancing against stockout risk in ways that exceed human cognitive bandwidth. After three months of deployment, customers have seen 15 to 30 percent savings on inventory carrying costs.
A third set of agents tackles procurement, specifically the “messy inbox” where supplier communications pile up outside the system of record. Those agents have reduced buyer workload by approximately 50 percent.
The Only AI Strategy That Actually Works
Sanjay has watched enough implementations to know the pattern. Most enterprise AI projects fail to drive meaningful outcomes, and his explanation for why is consistent across 25 years of experience: nobody was clear about what the outcome was supposed to be.
“AI for the sake of AI is not going to drive outcomes, and it will lead to disillusionment,” he says. The manufacturers who will pull ahead are the ones who identify a specific use case, define a measurable business outcome, and deploy with focus rather than breadth.
The underlying discipline is the same whether the technology is AI or ERP. Successful implementations start with the outcome and work backwards through people, process, and technology. Unsuccessful ones start with the technology and assume the rest will follow. “You implement new tech and you just do things the way you were doing in the past. You’ve just spent a lot of money shifting your old ways of working into a new system,” Sanjay says.
The urgency is real. “The genie’s out of the bottle,” he says. “If you’re not using it, your competitor is using it.” But urgency without clarity is how organizations spend significant budget on AI that produces no material change on the shop floor. The path forward is to nail a few use cases, build internal credibility that AI drives real outcomes, and then scale from there.
LinkedIn is the best place to reach Sanjay Brahmawar. He's active there and engages with manufacturers, technologists, and leaders thinking seriously about pace and modernization. Connect with Sanjay on LinkedIn →
Danny Gonzales
CEO, IndustrialSage
Danny brings deep industry knowledge and an operator's mindset to every conversation, cutting through the buzzwords to uncover real strategies that manufacturing and industrial leaders can actually use.
What does Sanjay Brahmawar mean when he says pace is a leadership choice?
"The world doesn't hold still, your competition doesn't hold still, and pace of execution, pace of decision-making, pace of delivering innovation to your clients, pace of responding to your client, it is so important in today's world to not only survive, but most importantly, to compete and win. And so I think pace is a leadership choice. It is a choice that the leader of the organization makes, so in this case, the CEO would make, and then it needs to filter through into the organization."
Sanjay Brahmawar, CEO of QAD | RedzoneIs Champion AI replacing jobs on the manufacturing shop floor?
"The manufacturing shop floors are not one where you're going in there and saying, 'Let me replace 20 or get rid of 20 of your people.' Actually, you're desperate to get 20 more people because there are not enough qualified labor, and most of the labor is above the age of 55. So our thinking is with Champion AI, we're thinking about how we make these frontline workers champions. That's the thinking. And so the agents that we're producing are here to augment the human being on the shop floor, to amplify their potential, so that they are 3 to 4X more effective, more productive."
Sanjay Brahmawar, CEO of QAD | RedzoneWhat separates manufacturers who succeed with technology implementations from those who fail?
"Where projects go well, they start with outcome and they work backwards. Not boiling the ocean to say these changes have to be made. And there, leadership steps up and they take ruthless decisions. That's very important too, taking decisions and having leaders who are willing to stand up and take decisions. And where things go wrong, scope is very poorly managed, no decisions are taken. There's constant discussion and debate. Nobody is focused on the outcome. Everybody's focused on the sausage-making, which is the totally wrong way to think about big change, big transformation. You've gotta be focused on the outcome."
Sanjay Brahmawar, CEO of QAD | RedzoneWhat is the 80/20 rule for leadership decisions, and why is hiring in the 20%?
"80% of the decisions are reversible and don't have so much of a cost of making a mistake. 20% of the decisions are important in the sense that they can't be reversed very easily, and therefore you need to spend time. Hiring is the 20%. And often we're always in a rush to hire because somebody's resigned. And we rush very quickly and we hire. And we don't take the time to really assess not just the person or the individual from their specific skills, but actually from a fit, an ambition, motivation to join the journey and be part of the journey. I have made a lot of mistakes, by the way, on that one, hiring too fast, and I've always regretted it."
Sanjay Brahmawar, CEO of QAD | RedzoneWhy are most AI projects in manufacturing failing to drive real outcomes?
"AI for the sake of AI is not gonna drive outcomes, and it will lead to disillusionment. We have enough studies telling us that 95% of these projects are not really driving outcomes. The reason is that nobody is very clear about what is the outcome and what is the use case, what's the business case, how are we gonna measure it. There is no choice. The genie's out of the bottle. This capability is available. If you're not using it, your competitor is using it. So it's not an option not to leverage AI today. I think it's just important that you leverage it for a clear outcome, and you drive through that outcome."
Sanjay Brahmawar, CEO of QAD | RedzoneInsights from manufacturing leaders shaping the future, delivered to your inbox, no noise.
Author: Wes Garrett
Content and Growth Marketing Producer | From Strategy to Execution, Delivering Impactful Media Solutions and Client Success