You can't put an agent on a shop floor you can't see

Gartner says supply-chain software with agentic AI hits $53B by 2030 and 80% of manufacturers are already buying in. It also predicts more than 40% of agentic AI projects fail by 2027. Both are true, and the reason is boring: most small and mid-size plants still run operations on spreadsheets and paper. You can't hand a shop floor to an autonomous agent when nobody — human or machine — can see what the shop floor is doing. Instrument first, automate second. Here's the order of operations.