What We Learned at DMC 2026: Speed, Digital Standards, and the Future of Technical Data

The Defense Manufacturing Conference 2026 brought together leaders from across the defense industrial base to address a shared challenge: how to deliver capability to the warfighter faster without sacrificing quality, traceability, or cost.

Across four days of sessions, panels, and conversations, two themes consistently emerged:

• The urgent need to increase speed across manufacturing and sustainment
• The growing importance of digital standards and usable technical data

If you look for the product data connection between these two trends, you find a need for speed in digital engineering that moves data faster while making it usable across the product lifecycle.

Speed Is the Mission

If there was one word that defined DMC 2026, it was speed.

From keynote sessions to technical panels, the message was consistent:

• “We want to go faster.”
• “We need expanded throughput, enhanced capability, and affordability.”
• “Better, cheaper, faster.”

Fielding and sustainment speed isn’t a new need. But the focus has shifted from innovation to throughput, especially for the Organic Industrial Base (OIB). The ability to rapidly respond to surge is critical to the future of defense manufacturing, where many sites have struggled to introduce new digital processes.

The goal is faster design cycles, faster manufacturing ramp, and faster sustainment and repair.

The Evolution of the Technical Data Package (TDP)

Another major theme was the evolution of the Technical Data Package (TDP). Historically, TDPs have been treated as static deliverables. But that model doesn’t fit perfectly with the machine-readable digital standards strategy of the future.

At DMC, the conversation shifted the concept of a TDP from static artifact to a living digital asset that evolves across the lifecycle. This perspective showed up across multiple sessions:

• Philip Jennings outlined how TDPs should mature from conceptual models to full product representations, supporting procurement and downstream use.
• Benjamin Urick demonstrated how standards like STEP and QIF enable semantic traceability and validation across the digital thread.

TDPs are no longer just endpoint deliverables. They need to become containers of product intent that remain usable across engineering, manufacturing, inspection, and sustainment. This presents a data distribution dilemma that requires a strategic rethinking of the future of TDPs.

Machine-Readable vs. Human-Readable: A False Tradeoff

Part of this data distribution discussion at DMC reinforced a theme we have recently explored in depth: Machine-readable vs. Human-readable Data in Digital Engineering 

The industry continues to push toward machine-readable, machine-interpretable, standards-driven data. And for good reasons. They enable automation, integration, and traceability.

DMC presenters and attendees made another point equally clear: Machine-readable data alone does not enable effective collaboration. Several sessions highlighted the need for balance:

• UUID and persistent ID initiatives emphasized traceability, but also the importance of human understanding and context
• AI-driven workflows showed significant gains in speed, but only when paired with human authoring and oversight, especially for complex processes and instructions
• Augmented reality work instructions improved efficiency, but still required human-readable experiences to be effective

Digital engineering data powers successful downstream processes when data can be both processed by systems and understood by people.

The Gap Between Innovation and Integration

One of the most quoted insights from the event captured a persistent challenge:

“We innovate a lot, but we don’t integrate enough.”

Despite advances in tools, standards, and platforms, many organizations still struggle to connect design to manufacturing, bring field data back into engineering, and maintain continuity across the lifecycle.

This gap is especially visible in the Organic Industrial Base (OIB), where manufacturing and sustainment environments often lag modern digital capabilities. As one panelist noted, “We are operating in Industry 2.0 environments while aiming for Industry 4.0 outcomes.”

Closing this gap is essential to achieving the speed and readiness goals emphasized throughout the conference.

From Data Availability to Data Use

Looking across everything we heard at the Defense Manufacturing Conference, we identified a common tactical theme: Digital engineering strategies will only help manufacturing go faster if we give careful thought to how the data is used by both machines and people to optimize for process and production speed.

This aligns directly with the direction outlined in the Department of War Digital Standards Strategy and reinforced by industry leaders. Machine-readable and machine-interpretable data provide the foundation. But human-readable, connected, and accessible data experiences are what allow that foundation to function in practice.

What This Means Going Forward

For organizations advancing digital engineering and manufacturing initiatives, the implications are becoming clearer.

Speed requires more than faster systems. It requires data that can be used effectively across the lifecycle. Standards are essential, but they must support both machines and people. And collaboration needs to happen in the context of the product data itself, not outside of it.

This is where many organizations are now focusing their efforts. Not just on creating and exchanging data, but on ensuring that data can be accessed, understood, and acted on across engineering, manufacturing, and sustainment environments.

Approaches that connect structured product data with consumable, human-readable experiences are emerging as a key enabler of speed, quality, and lifecycle continuity.

Conclusion

DMC 2026 made it clear that the industry needs to:

• Go faster
• Go digital
• Use standards

The next phase is about execution. And execution depends on whether the data driving digital engineering is structured for machine-readability, connected to preserve the digital thread, and readily usable by people who need to act on it.

This is also the focus of our recent work applying the DoW Digital Standards Strategy in real-world collaboration environments.