PAC RADAR: Digital Platforms & Service Providers for Industrial

PAC launches 2026 edition of its INNOVATION RADAR on Digital Platforms & Service Providers for Industrial Use Cases in Europe

Munich, July 23, 2026 – Market research and strategic consulting firm PAC presents its six-part PAC INNOVATION RADAR series on Digital Platforms & Service Providers for Industrial Use Cases. It provides the most comprehensive analysis of the vendor landscape for digital platforms and related services in the industrial context in Europe, and AI plays a growing role in this context. In six RADAR segments, PAC analyzed around 120 providers and evaluated 68 offerings in the European market. Across all segments, only ten players received a “Best in Class” rating, among them Accenture, Capgemini, Phoenix Contact, Siemens, and TeamViewer.

PAC annually evaluates the vendor landscape for digital platforms and digital service providers addressing the industrial world in the European market. The focus of the RADAR analyses lies on specific industrial use cases and emerging digital technologies, such as AI. The 2026 PAC INNOVATION RADAR series on Digital Platforms & Service Providers for Industrial Use Cases in Europe adds four new topics to the evaluation.

Evaluation of platforms for AI-based robots, simulation-driven industrial operations, GenAI-advanced engineering, industrial edge management, and connected workers, plus service providers covering MES

AI-based robots handling unknown objects (new topic) – This evaluation focuses on robot foundation models for picking & placing unknown objects. PAC considers this a promising AI-based use case and expects growing adoption. The current vendor landscape for pretrained AI models for unknown object handling is highly diverse, ranging from pure application providers (vision software/AI models) to fully integrated providers of automated warehouse systems.

Simulation-driven industrial operations (new topic) – The vision of the industrial metaverse is to combine visual process simulation for large and complex industrial systems, processes, and environments with the user experience of computer games – with photorealistic, collaborative, and intuitive interactions. Although the hype around the industrial metaverse is over, PAC still considers highly realistic and interactive digital twin simulations for optimizing industrial operations (factories, warehouses) to be a relevant use case. That is why we continue evaluating the progress of this vendor landscape.

GenAI-advanced industrial engineering (new topic) – GenAI-based coding tools like GitHub Copilot and Claude Code are well-known support tools for software development. This RADAR evaluates GenAI-based tools that support industrial engineers in their daily work, covering engineering workflows. To stay focused, we center our analysis on industrial engineering-related coding tools and product-related design and data platforms, such as CAD, PLM, and ALM.

Multi-MES platform expertise (new topic) is a relevant capability for digital service providers to meet the needs of manufacturing companies with heterogeneous MES implementations (typically due to M&As and/or diverse product portfolios). This expertise enables platform vendor-independent consulting, support, and consolidation roadmaps. PAC evaluates digital service providers’ capabilities in relation to various well-established MES platform vendors, such as Siemens, Dassault Systèmes, Rockwell Automation, SAP, AVEVA, MPDV, Critical Manufacturing, and Tulip.

Connected workers – These platforms support use cases ranging from digital work instructions through visual guidance and verification to AI-based digital support and remote expert services for mobile industrial workers. During the current market consolidation phase, several connected worker platform vendors are seeking to reposition themselves toward broader topics, such as maintenance and field service management. This will allow them to broaden their footprint within their installed base.

Industrial edge management – These platforms act as an integration layer for IT and OT and provide a bridge for edge and cloud computing capabilities. They use concepts from the IT world, such as container and virtualization technologies, which help optimize infrastructure and application management at the industrial edge (OT world) and get ready for growing workloads around industrial AI, machine vision, and virtual PLCs. Mechanical engineering companies and factory managers use these platforms to manage and secure industrial controllers and IT equipment (PLCs, IPCs, HMIs, and servers) across their installed base of machines and factories.

PAC INNOVATION RADAR “Digital Platforms for Industrial Edge Management”, one of six RADAR segments

For more information about this PAC RADAR series, go to “Digital Platforms & Service Providers for Industrial Use Cases in Europe 2026”