Manufacturers Rethink Data Architecture For Agents

Manufacturers are urged to overhaul factory data infrastructures as agentic AI will expand edge-based data consumers from today's 10–50 systems to thousands, a roughly 100× increase, the article warns on April 6, 2026. It highlights Model Context Protocol (MCP) as an open protocol for LLM agents, cites IDC finding that 56.6% of industrial organizations are planning or piloting agents, and recommends DataOps, hub-and-spoke architectures, and governance.