PLANARA LEADERS · FOR MANUFACTURING
A cohort-based executive program for product and innovation leaders at industrial enterprises. Curriculum designed by MIT faculty. Tailored to your organization. Six to eight weeks, applied to your real work.
of manufacturing organizations are using AI across their business. Only 6% have agentic AI in production. (Kyndryl, 2025; Manufacturing Leadership Council, 2025)
of manufacturing leaders say their workforce isn’t ready to leverage it. Human capital is the lowest maturity dimension across smart manufacturing. (Kyndryl, 2025; Deloitte Smart Manufacturing Survey, 2025)
manufacturing roles to fill by 2033 — up to half may go unfilled. The loss of institutional expertise is accelerating. (Deloitte / Manufacturing Institute, 2024)
of manufacturing leaders report low or very low confidence in their frontline leaders’ readiness to lead AI-driven change. This program is for the ones who want to change that. (PwC / Manufacturing Institute, 2025)
The gap isn’t technology. Every major industrial enterprise has launched AI pilots. Most have deployed tools. What almost none have built is the human capability to lead through it — to decide what to build, understand what people actually need, and guide teams where AI is a participant, not just a feature.
This isn’t AI tools training. It’s leadership development for an era where the tools are extraordinary and the judgment still has to be human.
BUILT FOR
They know how to find out what people actually need — and build toward it. Whether the product is a machine, software, or an agentic system.
Direction-setting, roadmap, and working across engineering, design, and business. Real confidence in territory that was previously unfamiliar.
How do new tools change how we deliver what we already build? And what entirely new categories of value can we create? We address both.
A cohort on the same frameworks, making faster decisions together. Individual learning becomes organizational capability.
A certificate grounded in Matt Kressy’s IDM methodology — appropriate for LinkedIn and resume.
Matt Kressy founded MIT’s Integrated Design & Management program and ran it for nearly three decades. Through his firm Designturn, he has shipped more than 100 products for organizations from startups to the Fortune 500. He teaches innovation the way practitioners wish they’d been taught — grounded in what people actually need, and in what actually ships.
Matt has delivered executive versions of this curriculum to cohorts across pharma, manufacturing, and technology worldwide.
James Haliburton is a serial entrepreneur and transformation leader who works at both ends of the stack — setting strategy in the boardroom and shipping systems on the keyboard. He has co-founded and exited multiple companies and delivered innovations to more than twenty Fortune 100 organizations.
James has led AI transformation engagements inside complex industrial organizations at Fortune 100 scale.
For a week-by-week view of how a typical program runs, see our sample program outline.
Before we finalize a single session, we interview 3–5 members of your team. The curriculum we send you is built on what they told us.
30 minutes
We ask about your team, what you’re trying to build, and what success looks like.
within one week
We speak with 3–5 members of your team, 20–30 minutes each, to understand their world directly.
We send a curriculum outline and a clear pricing proposal — no obligation.
If it’s right, we move forward. If not, you have a free outside perspective on your team’s capability gaps.
A 30-minute intro call. No obligation. Free outside perspective on your team’s capability gaps if nothing else.