Manufacturing is entering a decisive moment. Rising costs, intensifying global competition, expanding regulatory requirements, and the rapid acceleration of agentic artificial intelligence are reshaping how products are designed, planned, produced, delivered, and serviced. Volatility is no longer an exception; it is the operating environment.

To succeed, manufacturers need more than incremental improvements or siloed optimizations. They need to orchestrate their operations end to end with connected processes and trusted data, so they can respond faster to change, operate more efficiently, remain compliant, and continue to grow—even as disruption is constant.

At Hannover Messe 2026, the world’s leading stage for industrial transformation, SAP will introduce a new set of AI‑powered manufacturing and supply chain innovations. These innovations help companies ensure business continuity by orchestrating people, processes, and technology across their extended enterprise, turning volatility into an opportunity for resilience, efficiency, and customer impact.

From AI insight to AI in execution

For years, manufacturers have invested in analytics and dashboards to improve visibility. But visibility alone does not prevent disruption. What’s required now is AI embedded directly into core business processes, where intelligence can analyze alerts, reason over business impact, and provide real-time solutions to resolve issues. With agentic AI, companies are now able to go a step further: automating the right actions for the best outcomes, with humans remaining in the loop wherever critical decisions are required.

SAP is operationalizing AI at industrial scale by embedding AI agents directly into supply chain and manufacturing workflows and contextualizing them with trusted enterprise and network data. Built on harmonized industrial, transactional, and network data, these agents can move beyond analysis to real‑time prediction and execution, working to deliver resilience, regulatory readiness, and measurable customer impact from day one. Creating tangible ROI is what matters most—whether by reducing unplanned downtimes, scrap, and rework, or by increasing quality and ultimately production output.

Orchestrating the supply chain end to end with AI

At the center of SAP’s focus at Hannover Messe is end-to-end supply chain orchestration with AI.

SAP helps manufacturers connect processes and data not only across internal teams, but also across company boundaries—with suppliers, logistics partners, and service providers. By using AI agents to connect design, planning, procurement, manufacturing, logistics, service, and asset management—and by integrating seamlessly with ERP and line-of-business systems—SAP helps break down silos that slow decision-making and increase operational risk.

This new agentic orchestration is powered and governed by a portfolio of intelligent applications that act, not just analyze, enabling faster, more coordinated responses without sacrificing quality, control, or growth.

New AI agents redefining planning, service, and operations

At Hannover Messe 2026, SAP will showcase AI agents that help manufacturers and operators reduce time to value, stabilize operations, and improve service levels amid ongoing disruption. As a precursor to broader announcements planned for SAP Sapphire, these agents demonstrate how agentic AI delivers practical benefits across all supply chain domains. Here are a few examples:

Manufacturing

• Production Master Data Agent helps automate and optimize the creation and maintenance of production master data. By leveraging the bill of materials, the agent can generate production routings—including operations and work centers—and help ensure components are correctly assigned across the production process. This helps reduce manual effort, accelerate production setup, and keep production data accurate as requirements change. General availability is planned for Q2 2026.
• Production Planning and Operations Agent enables planners to release production orders using natural language while automatically validating material availability, capacity, and scheduling constraints. Joule provides recommendations—such as alternative components or rescheduling options—that planners can review and approve, reducing manual work and keeping production aligned with real‑world conditions. General availability is planned for Q2 2026.

Assets & services

• Field Service Dispatcher Agent can improve service responsiveness and asset uptime by dispatching the right technician based on skills, location, asset condition, and priority—driving faster resolution and better workforce utilization. General availability is planned for Q2 2026.
• Alert Processing Agent can enrich operational alerts using past incidents, resolutions, and contextual signals and recommend clear, data‑driven actions to help teams resolve issues faster and improve operational reliability. General availability is planned for Q3 2026.
• Asset Health Agent analyzes time‑series health indicators to assess and summarize the current and projected health of individual and multiple technical objects. By forecasting when assets are likely to become critical and alerting users in real time, the agent supports condition‑based maintenance and helps minimize downtime while ensuring asset availability. General availability is planned for Q3 2026.

AI agents advancing logistics execution

• Material Reservation Agent helps ensure materials are available when and where needed by automating reservation creation and maintenance based on business rules—reducing delays, improving inventory accuracy, and optimizing working capital. General availability is planned for Q2 2026.
• Outbound Task Orchestration Agent can protect customer service levels by detecting and resolving picking and packing issues in real time, orchestrating corrective actions to support on‑time, accurate delivery. General availability is planned for Q2 2026.

Aligning workforce, logistics, and assets in real time

Operational resilience also depends on synchronizing people with all other resources as conditions change.

With SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Scheduling, skills, certifications, availability, and labor rules are aligned with real-time operational demand so workforce plans can adjust automatically as production changes.

In logistics, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, AI‑assisted backorder processing, together with the new SAP Logistics Management solution, helps organizations reduce transportation costs, accelerate warehouse execution, and improve delivery performance. Using conversational interaction with Joule, order managers can prioritize fulfillment while automatically accounting for availability and scheduling constraints.

Asset and quality operations also benefit from embedded intelligence. AI-assisted anomaly detection and alert processing in SAP Asset Performance Management helps teams identify risks earlier, prioritize actions, and reduce unplanned downtime. In parallel, SAP Document AI can automate the processing of incoming quality certificates, improving throughput, data quality, and compliance at scale.

Regulatory readiness and what’s next

As regulatory requirements tighten, SAP is expanding support for Digital Product Passports as part of SAP Business Network, aligned with the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). These capabilities help manufacturers create ESPR‑ready product records capturing environmental impact, material composition, repairability, and recyclability data. General availability is planned for Q2 2026.

Expanded SAP Business Network capabilities also deliver built‑in e‑invoicing compliance and data-residency support, enabling secure partner collaboration, synchronized logistics, and improved delivery performance across global networks.

See it live at Hannover Messe 2026

Taken together, these innovations reflect a shift from reactive management to intelligent execution—where AI is embedded directly into the processes that keep manufacturing and supply chains running today while laying the foundation for the next wave of innovation that will be unveiled at SAP Sapphire.

Visit SAP at booth F08 in Hall 15 at Hannover Messe 2026, April 20–24, to see how AI-infused orchestration, embedded AI agents, and end‑to‑end supply chain applications are redefining manufacturing.

Dominik Metzger is president and chief product officer for SAP Supply Chain Management.

WALLDORF & REDWOOD CITY— SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) and Reltio Inc. today announced that SAP has agreed to acquire Reltio, a leading master data management (MDM) software provider, to help customers make their SAP and non-SAP enterprise data AI-ready. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Once closed, the acquisition will strengthen SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC)—integral for SAP’s AI-First and Suite-First strategy—and accelerate the evolution of SAP BDC to a fully interoperable enterprise data platform for enterprise-wide agentic AI. It will provide customers with the tools they need to unify, cleanse and harmonize data across sources for superior enterprise-wide agentic AI.

“Reltio is a natural fit with SAP,” said Muhammad Alam, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, SAP Product & Engineering. “Acquiring them will further improve our position as a leading business AI provider, combining SAP and non-SAP data to deliver data context that business AI requires. AI cannot reach its full potential when data is fragmented across business units, platforms and domains without connection or context.”

By integrating Reltio after closing the acquisition, SAP will make customers’ enterprise data fully AI-ready. Customers will be able to rely on trusted, high-quality data across SAP and non-SAP sources that Joule and Joule Agents use to deliver faster time-to-value for business AI.

Reltio’s platform helps organizations manage and govern structured and unstructured enterprise data from start to finish. Its AI-based entity resolution identifies and merges related records from different formats and applications into one reliable “golden record” system of context. Its cloud-native, AI-first design supports a single, consistent view of customers, products, suppliers, locations and employees across both SAP and non-SAP applications. Customers running AI tasks will benefit from increased reliability and consistency of data, bundled in a single source of truth, improving business AI. With that, customers can trust that AI results are correct, and AI-interactions are resolved fast.

“Joining forces with SAP presents a tremendous opportunity for us to accelerate our mission,” Reltio Founder and CEO Manish Sood said. “Enterprise AI needs trusted context that is open and interoperable across the heterogeneous IT landscapes our customers run. This combination accelerates our ability to deliver Reltio as the system of context across SAP and non-SAP environments, while maintaining continuity for our customers and our partner ecosystem.”

Reltio’s data cleansing, unification capabilities and agent-driven workflows will work alongside SAP Business Suite applications to improve decisions, reduce integration complexity and deliver trusted, consistent data critical for successful business processes and AI use cases. Low latency delivery and support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) enable real-time, multiagent workflows across SAP and non-SAP environments, allowing AI agents, such as a procurement agent, to assess supplier risk and trigger actions almost instantly using trusted, real-time data. Reltio offers prebuilt, industry-specific “velocity packs” that include data models, rules, matching logic and integrations, and solutions tailored to sectors like life sciences, healthcare and financial services.

By integrating Reltio after closing the acquisition, SAP intends to accelerate its customers’ ability to govern and expose master data as trusted and context-rich data products across multiple sources that serve both traditional analytics workloads and AI agents. Reltio will become a core capability within SAP BDC, with a flexible commercial model where customers can purchase Reltio as a separate solution or with other SAP products. The Reltio portfolio will also remain available as a standalone offering for the foreseeable future.

The transaction is expected to close in Q2 or Q3 of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.

Visit the SAP News Center. Get SAP news via LinkedIn and Bluesky.

About Reltio

Reltio is a leader in data unification and management, delivering cloud-native, AI-native master data management (MDM) to help enterprises create trusted data and unlock context intelligence for analytics, automation, and agentic AI. Designed for complex, multi-vendor environments, Reltio helps organizations unify, cleanse, harmonize, govern, and activate core data from multiple sources in real time—across SAP and non-SAP systems. The Reltio Data Cloud uses advanced entity resolution, continuous data quality, and relationship intelligence within an intelligent data graph to connect data across systems and reveal the full context behind customers, products, suppliers, and other key business entities. This enables organizations to reduce data friction, improve operational execution, and accelerate time to trusted decisions. For more information, visit www.reltio.com.

About SAP

As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP (NYSE:SAP) stands at the nexus of business and technology. For over 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out their best by uniting business-critical operations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

Note to editors:
To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high resolution material for your media channels.

For customers interested in learning more about SAP products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: 1 (800) 872-1SAP (1-800-872-1727)

For more information, press only:
Marcus Winkler, SAP, +49 151 571 18 691, marcus.winkler@sap.com, CET
Aimée Leabon, SAP, +1 (212) 653-9600, aimee.leabon@sap.com, EST
Daniel Reinhardt, SAP, +49 151 168 10 157, daniel.reinhardt@sap.com, CET
Ilaina Jonas, SAP, +1 (646) 923-2834, ilaina.jonas@sap.com, EST
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com
Kevin Keenan, Reltio, +1 (987) 844-6203, kevin.keenan@reltio.com, PST

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP’s 2025 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
© 2026 SAP SE. All rights reserved.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices.
Please consider our privacy policy. If you received this press release in your e-mail and you wish to unsubscribe to our mailing list please contact press@sap.com and write Unsubscribe in the subject line.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has moved far beyond experimentation. It is already reshaping how industries operate, how economies evolve, and how people experience work.

Recent McKinsey research shows that almost all organizations now use AI in some form, yet most are still at the beginning of scaling it responsibly and effectively. At the same time, there is no question that technological change continues to happen at a remarkable pace, and it demands careful guidance through constant organizational transformation, strong leadership, and the key ability to learn and unlearn.

I am convinced that the future will not be human versus AI, despite this still-dominant narrative. It will be determined by how effectively human insight, judgement, and expertise shape AI’s integration into work and society. The real opportunity lies in combining human and AI across creative and analytical domains, applying the right competencies in the right context.

Built on trust and ethical intent, AI can amplify human potential while inevitably transforming certain roles and tasks. The Intelligent Age is not about technological dominance, but about purposeful progress through human-AI collaboration.

The rise of human-AI power couples

Imagine working with a new colleague who has not been trained in a classroom but by algorithms processing vast datasets. Simply put, this AI teammate delivers speed, scale, and precision while you bring judgement, context, and creativity. Together, you achieve outcomes neither could deliver alone.

This is already happening across industries. The real differentiator is how well humans and intelligent systems complement each other’s strengths—mainly combining AI’s capacity for data-driven execution with human adaptability and vision. These human-AI power couples are becoming a new source of competitive advantage, able to solve problems faster, spot opportunities earlier, and innovate more boldly.

Yet this potential only materializes when people trust the AI tools they use: trust built not just on transparency, but on daily experience of systems that help them succeed.

Designing the new architecture of work

To set these human-AI power couples up for success, organizations must rethink the very architecture of work. Trust and collaboration are not enough if the underlying structures remain rigid. Traditional roles and hierarchies cannot keep pace with continuous technological change. Work will become increasingly fluid, shaped by skills, collaboration, and shared intelligence. Our time demands adaptive organizations that continuously learn and enable their teams to take on new challenges as they arise.

Consequently, this shift also places new expectations on leaders. As AI progresses, human leadership becomes increasingly important, not less. Leaders must design environments where human and artificial intelligence reinforce each other, and they must actively drive the effective use of AI to deliver business outcomes. This requires adopting a new model, in which leaders fluently manage integrated systems of people and AI agents. They are accountable not only for their human teams’ performance, but also for the limitations of the AI models they deploy. This means creating a working environment where experimentation is encouraged and where people feel supported as their roles evolve.

As shown in SAP’s own Future of Work research, employees express growing openness toward AI-enabled coaching and support. When AI takes on parts of the coaching role, leaders must focus on what only humans can provide: context, empathy, and the ability to inspire. AI can track progress, but it cannot build trust or shape culture.

The human skills that will shape the Intelligent Age

As humans and intelligent systems collaborate more closely, the skills people need will also continue to evolve. Research from the OECD and the World Economic Forum shows that skills have a shorter lifespan than ever before. Traditional job profiles no longer keep pace. The real differentiator is how quickly people can learn and keep up as technology advances.

A skills-led organization takes a holistic view of employees’ skills across the entire employee life cycle—from recruiting and learning to talent development and succession management. Its defining capability is the ability to adapt with speed to external changes and disruptions. A company can adjust required skills almost in real time. This is a prerequisite to staying competitive and responding quickly to customer and market needs.

AI is the catalyst for this adaptability: it identifies skill gaps in real time, personalizes learning journeys, and enables talent to move fluidly to where it is most needed. This turns skills management from a static process into a dynamic system, preparing a workforce that evolves alongside technology rather than being overtaken by it.

Culture as the true algorithm

At the same time, culture becomes equally decisive. Technology may accelerate change, but culture determines its impact. Responsible AI adoption depends on strong cultural foundations. A culture of trust enables people to take ownership and try new approaches without fear of failure. The goal is to have a workforce with a true growth mindset. A mindset that is defined by the inner drive to grow turns change from uncertainty into progress. It is the ability to learn and unlearn, to let go of outdated approaches and embrace new ones.

In fast-moving industries like technology, the pace of transformation is beyond any single person’s control; what can be shaped is how we respond to it. When curiosity and adaptation become a constant core element of organizational agility, change is met with confidence.

Building inclusive and forward-looking societies

When such strong organizational cultures guide responsible AI adoption, their influence naturally extends beyond the workplace, shaping how technology transforms societies, economies, labor markets, and education systems. Whether this shift leads to broader opportunity or deeper inequality depends on the decisions we make now.

AI is already widening access to learning, democratizing coaching, creating more opportunities, and enabling people to focus on meaningful, uniquely human work. The challenge now is to scale these gains, so the Intelligent Age drives shared progress—not deeper inequality—under a responsible, human-centric approach.

What matters now

In the Intelligent Age, technological progress will not wait—nor should it—but it does require leaders to redesign how work and organizations function so that human and artificial intelligence advance together.

This demands a radical rethinking of structures, skills, and leadership models to match the pace of innovation. Three imperatives stand out.

• Design for trust: Ensure transparent governance and explicit human accountability, embedded in every stage of AI design; this is essential to building trust in human-AI collaboration.
• Build human capability: Make continuous learning, upskilling, and mobility the default, powered by AI insights that connect talent to opportunity in real time.
• Lead with humanity: Anchor empathy, purpose, and ethical judgment in every decision.

Technology can amplify performance and even inspire to think out of the box, but only when guided by clear intent and values. The future will favor organizations that reimagine work at the speed of technology—and keep humanity at its core.

AI will accelerate our potential, and while technology’s advance is largely unstoppable, it is our values and leadership that will determine how we respond to and guide its impact. AI without humanity is simply incomplete.

Gina Vargiu-Breuer is chief people officer, labor director, and a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE.

This piece originally appeared on the World Economic Forum website.