In Stay Sharp Episode 135, iBase-t Excelerate 2026 Wrap Up, co-hosts Juliann Grant and Jonathan Scott report from the floor of iBase-t’s annual Excelerate conference with highlights of the MES and MRO–focused customer event.
In contrast to other conferences put on by a platform provider, “It’s not focused on the engineering side, it’s focused on this manufacturing and sustainment side,” Jonathan says, which makes sense for a customer base primarily concerned with highly complex manufacturing projects. He adds, “They’re about getting product out the door, they’re very focused on that, so a lot of the conversations and topics are about how do we get things done.”
Event Highlights
The duo both appreciated the event for its combination of customer focus, its variety of technical sessions, and the community vibe that was evident in the widespread collaboration and information-sharing that took place—even between rival manufacturers. Juliann says, “Sometimes it’s a very competitive market and people don’t want to share, but there was a lot of good sharing, a lot of cross-pollination across what people are doing and how they can learn from each other.”
Sung Kim, iBase-t CTO ((Photo Courtesy of iBase-t)
While Jonathan admits he’s a fan of basically every tech session, his standout was iBase-t’s CTO, Sung Kim, talking about AI and how it needs to work in enterprise applications. The big point was security, he says, “You don’t want just any AI on top of your systems. You want to think about how AI’s inside of the system, because then the security model applies, and you’re not worried about your data getting out and going places it shouldn’t go.” Kim’s approach was a pragmatic one—with “pragmatic” being the phrase of the week, Juliann notes.
Sessions included several customers and partners presenting on Solumina upgrades and implementations, as well as a popular topic: de-customization. Jonathan notes the discussion between Honeywell and Razorleaf colleagues Jeff Meyer and Brian Neff was interesting because it represented a different take: lack of disruption. “It was almost a different story, a different angle,” Jonathan explains. “Because they said, ‘Yes, de-customization is where we want to get to eventually,’ and everybody knows it’s a good goal. But in this case, it wasn’t the focus. It was ‘we kept our customizations to disrupt manufacturing in the shop floor as little as possible’. And they achieved it.”
Discussion between Honeywell’s Ryan Sims and Razorleaf’s Jeff Meyer and Brian Neff. (Photo courtesy of iBase-t)
(Photo courtesy of iBase-t)
Since she spent most of her time in the exhibit area, Juliann highlights iBase-t’s booth that offered demos and hands-on activities with all different aspects of the Solumina Manufacturing Operations Platform. Jonathan was particularly sorry to have missed an example of the iBase-t team’s creativity: a Lego exercise connected to process plans and work instructions. Customer engagement also made for fun and sweet treats when the organizers brought in Shamrock shakes and Irish musicians for the St. Patrick’s Day holiday.
Conference-Floor Buzz
Jonathan’s favorite conversations throughout the week were the model-based discussions, and he heard more than expected about where different organizations are in their digital maturity. While some organizations are well into their journey, others are just starting or still working on getting off of paper-based processes.
He heard clever solutions from iBase-t, mentioning Darrell Sabourin’s session on Solumina IDs, adding, “I had a lot of good conversations with customers about how does that play out, how does that look for them, what are they going to do with that?”
Another hot topic around the conference was integration, and Juliann says the team at the Razorleaf booth fielded many questions about their CLOVER end-to-end integration platform from “people trying to figure out how to move the data around the golden triangle between ERP, PLM, and MES.” She adds, “I think there was a lot of movement going on about data management and where to put data in the right place, also to support AI. Everyone knows that without the right foundation, AI’s not going to work that well.”
Jonathan and Juliann both praise iBase-t for their approach to the event, noting the surprising session in which the company shared the top 10 items they’re working on improving in the software and asked for feedback on what else they can be doing. “There are some events you go to where there’s the conference, and then there’s all the meetings off to the side, and you never see the leadership team because they’re always in the meetings,” Jonathan says. “That’s not the case. We saw them. They were leading the sessions. They were in the sessions. They were taking the questions.”
Learn More About iBase-t’s Excelerate Conference
The full podcast contains more discussion and details on a variety of topics, including why customers were talking about global templates for process deployment, the pressure manufacturers are under to get automation in place, and more.
Be sure to check out Stay Sharp Episode 135: iBase-t Excelerate 2026 Wrap Up and join us each week for a new podcast.
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