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Back in 2022, we sketched out what would become the Connected Manufacturing Network. Not as a feature add-on. Not as a nice-to-have. As the foundational architecture that would fundamentally change how biopharma manufacturers think about global operations.
Today, Apprentice won the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Award in the 2026 IoT Breakthrough Awards Program for that vision, specifically for Apprentice Pro, the industry's first multi-enterprise, Digital Center of Excellence-ready MES built on CMN.
While awards are gratifying, what matters more is what this recognition signals about where the industry has arrived.
The pattern started becoming clear back in 2018. Huge MES global teams were building elaborate processes, ironically documented on digital paper, aka SOPs in a QMS, just to manage their multi-site implementations. Same company. Same recipe building blocks. Same approach. But three different MES deployments, completely disconnected.
Or even worse: "connected" via Citrix remote desktop style data centers. Facepalm. 🤦 That's not connected. That's duct tape.
Sure, day one they don't need to be connected. But what happens when you need to share a recipe from one site to another? What happens when you need to monitor runs across all sites? What happens when you need to collaborate with a CDMO? What happens when you need to transfer tech from development to manufacturing? When regulatory needs visibility across your entire network? When your CDMO needs your approval to release a batch? When you're launching a new product and need coordinated campaigns across multiple facilities?
Every one of these scenarios, which happen constantly in modern biopharma, required painful workarounds, manual data transfers, or just accepting that your "global" system was really a collection of isolated silos.
And yes, I know the industry loves the "island of automation" metaphor. But I've always hated it. I live in the tropics. Islands are beautiful. The isolation is what keeps them gorgeous. It's not the islands we need to fix. It's the bridges, ferries, the entire transportation system between them that we need to address, while keeping the unique beauty and power of each island intact.
But let's be real about what we're actually dealing with. It's like buying smart home devices and never connecting them to WiFi. Like having computers that can't network, something we solved in the 1970s. Like building social media platforms for each site separately, with no way for them to friend each other or share posts. You've got all the infrastructure with none of the actual networking.
We're in 2026. Why are we still accepting this in manufacturing?
Legacy vendors continue to use traditional MES approaches even in their "next gen" capabilities, focusing heavily on tech transfer by defining parameters in one place and one-click transferring down through L2 or providing migration tools to import/export data between systems. That's valuable for recipe standardization and for keeping things afloat. But it's missing the connective tissue between sites and the humans actually using the software. And it is only truly valuable if you're building a greenfield site.
What about the other 95% of manufacturers with existing sites? We built something different: GitHub for manufacturing.
Published data that sites can accept or reject. Local changes where needed. Updates that flow bidirectionally. Version control that respects both global standards and site reality. A network that actually connects brownfield operations, not just a distribution mechanism that assumes you're starting from scratch.
CMN launched as platform infrastructure in late 2023. It created seamless connections between sites, organizations, and lifecycle stages. But the real transformation started in 2024 when leading manufacturers began deploying at scale.
Through 2024-2025, we systematically built what became Apprentice Pro on this foundation. Not just features. Capabilities that directly addressed the four critical challenges manufacturers kept telling us about:
Global Recipe Management, because every manufacturer needs standardization without sacrificing the flexibility to adapt processes to local requirements. The Master/Local data model with Batch Parameter Groups ensures compliance while enabling site-specific optimization. BPG upversioning means recipe evolution propagates across the network in hours, not months.
Instant Tech Transfers, because "months-long tech transfer" shouldn't be an acceptable phrase in 2026. The Advanced Transfer System with intelligent version management and draft support reduces transfer time from months to hours. Cross-environment transfers (Dev ↔ Val ↔ Prod) happen seamlessly with smart reconciliation.
Multi-Organization Collaboration, because manufacturing happens across organizational boundaries, and systems should too. External Sponsor Batch Review gives CDMOs and their customers real-time visibility and collaborative release workflows. Core/Site Team Switching connects users across separate single-tenant environments while maintaining data sovereignty.
Expedited New Product Introduction, because speed to market directly impacts patient access to therapies. Enterprise-level Product Management with Campaign Scheduling coordinates activities across sites. The Product Pipeline moves products between teams instantly. The Enterprise Management Role provides oversight without bottlenecks.
These aren't theoretical capabilities. They're proven at scale.
A global biopharma manufacturer: Greenfield to validated GMP manufacturing in under one year. Twenty-six procedures authored "digital first" in five months. Hundreds of millions of doses across three global locations.
A global CDMO with 40+ facilities: Six sites deployed in nine months. Global standardization across US and EU operations.
A multinational pharmaceutical company: Three sites activated in under eight months, with four more in progress.
These organizations aren't just implementing new MES software. They're fundamentally shifting from fragmented operations to unified global manufacturing intelligence. Faster commercialization. Therapies reaching patients sooner.
That's the real impact.
The IoT Breakthrough Awards evaluators looked at the entire landscape of smart manufacturing innovation. They chose Apprentice Pro because CMN-powered capabilities represent a fundamental architecture shift, not incremental improvement.
Three years from concept to award. But this isn't the finish line. It's validation that we've built the right foundation for what's coming.
The industry has moved from next-gen MES to Accelerated MES to Agentic MES capabilities, while many organizations still struggle with basic adoption challenges. CMN and Apprentice Pro weren't built just for today's requirements. They're the foundation for Agentic manufacturing, where AI agents will execute complex workflows autonomously, where digital co-workers handle tedious tasks while humans focus on strategic decisions, where systems truly understand manufacturing context and act intelligently within defined parameters.
Here's the reality: you can only deploy agentic AI at enterprise scale on an enterprise architecture.
Organizations that build on connected, flexible, multi-enterprise architectures today will be ready for seamless adoption of agentic AI capabilities. Those still locked into legacy on-prem, disconnected systems will spend years trying to catch up to technology that's already here.
The industry's biggest challenge isn't technology anymore. It's adoption. The organizations that lead the next decade won't be the ones with the most advanced legacy systems. They'll be the ones who recognized that connected, intelligent, multi-enterprise manufacturing requires connected, intelligent, multi-enterprise architecture.
We built that architecture. The industry is starting to recognize it. Now comes the really interesting part, seeing what manufacturers build on top of it.
Want to see how CMN-powered Apprentice Pro can transform your global manufacturing operations? Let's talk.
Emilee Cook, VP Product
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