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On December 3, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) issued a request for information on technologies to address workforce shortages in US manufacturing, emphasizing AI-driven training, augmented reality for skill-building, and automation integration.

This initiative targets the 500,000+ unfilled jobs, focusing on defense-critical sectors like semiconductors and aerospace. Manufacturing.gov and Deloitte Insights highlighted it as part of a broader push for "smart workforce" strategies, with potential funding announcements in early 2026.

I spent Tuesday afternoon watching a VP of operations at a mid-sized automotive supplier explain why his company doesn't participate in industry roundtables, doesn't share implementation experiences with other manufacturers, and certainly doesn't collaborate with anyone who might theoretically compete for the same contracts someday.

His plant was three months into a failed MES implementation that was already $200K over budget. The integrator they hired had never worked in automotive. Their IT director was learning IT/OT convergence on the job. And they were solving problems that at least a dozen other plants in their region had already figured out.

But asking for help? Sharing notes with other operators? That's giving away competitive advantage.

This is the collaboration tax most manufacturing executives don't realize they're paying.

Here's what that automotive supplier's paranoia actually cost them over 18 months. Their MES project took 14 months instead of 8 because they refused to talk to other plants about integrator selection. That's $180K in extended consulting fees. Their choice of an inexperienced integrator added another $250K in change orders and rework. The production disruptions from a poorly planned go-live cost them approximately $400K in lost throughput and overtime.

Total collaboration tax: $830K.

Compare that to what they were protecting. Their "proprietary" process? Standard automotive tier-2 work that fifty other suppliers do nearly identically. Their vendor relationships? Completely non-exclusive agreements with the same distributors everyone else uses. Their secret competitive advantage? It didn't exist.

What they actually had was a standard operation run by smart people who convinced themselves that isolation equals protection.

The best manufacturing operators I know maintain a network of five to eight contacts at non-competing companies. Not competitors. Not companies in adjacent markets who might someday compete. Genuinely non-overlapping operations.

A plant manager in Ohio makes HVAC components. He talks monthly with plant managers who make medical devices in North Carolina, food processing equipment in Wisconsin, and industrial pumps in Pennsylvania. Zero market overlap. Zero competitive threat.

What they share: integrator experiences, cybersecurity incidents and responses, automation vendor performance, workforce training approaches, ERP implementation lessons, and energy management strategies.

What they don't share: customer lists, pricing strategies, process innovations that actually matter, or anything remotely proprietary.

Every plant that implements MES makes the same fifteen mistakes. The vendor doesn't mention ten of them. The integrator has learned to avoid five of them through painful experience. The other ten just happen during implementation.

Plants that collaborate learn about all fifteen before they start. Plants that don't collaborate learn about them at $15K to $75K per mistake.

The paranoia isn't completely irrational.

Most executives have been in meetings where someone shared too much and watched a competitor use that information. Or they've seen careless vendors discuss one client's approach with another. Or they work in industries where genuine trade secrets actually matter.

The problem is applying that same defensive posture to every interaction. Treating the plant manager making completely different products in a different geography like a corporate spy. Assuming every conversation is a threat vector.

This is how companies end up paying consultants $300/hour to tell them things that their peers could have shared for free. It's how they waste six months evaluating vendors that other operators already know are terrible. It's how they implement technology strategies that failed at three other plants last year.

The collaboration tax compounds because you're not just paying for your own mistakes. You're paying to repeat everyone else's mistakes too.

Real collaboration isn't about joining industry associations and collecting business cards at conferences. It's about building a small network of operators you actually talk to.

This means identifying four to six manufacturing leaders at non-competing companies who deal with similar operational challenges. Not similar products. Similar challenges. Someone implementing MES. Someone dealing with aging infrastructure. Someone managing IT/OT convergence. Someone navigating workforce transitions.

Then you actually maintain those relationships. A call every six weeks. A text when you hit a weird problem. A heads-up when you learn something useful. This isn't networking theater. This is operational intelligence sharing.

The best operators I know treat these relationships like insurance policies. Most of the time, nothing dramatic happens. But when you hit a critical decision point or a major problem, having someone to call who's already been through it is worth more than any consulting engagement.

Here's the part most executives get wrong. Your competitive advantage isn't your vendor relationships, your technology choices, or your implementation approaches. Those are all easily replicable.

Your competitive advantage is execution speed. It's your ability to implement solutions faster, solve problems quicker, and adapt to changes more effectively than your actual competitors.

Collaboration accelerates execution. Isolation slows it down.

When you refuse to learn from operators outside your company, you're not protecting anything valuable. You're just making yourself slower and more expensive than you need to be.

The plant managers who collaborate ruthlessly with non-competitors consistently outperform the ones who don't. They implement technology faster. They avoid more mistakes. They find better vendors. They solve problems quicker.

And none of them are giving away actual competitive secrets. They're just refusing to pay the collaboration tax that paranoid operators treat as normal business practice.

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And that’s all folks!

Till next week,

The Industrial Executive