TrendLab 2025: Where Industrial AI Meets Human Expertise

A recap from Cologne and Houston

I had the privilege of opening and closing both TrendLab events this year—in Cologne (September 30–October 1) and Houston (October 8–9)—and I want to share my perspectives what made these gatherings so energizing for our Community.

Real Impact: Two Clear Themes

The customer presentations at TrendLab weren't just slideware—they were proof points organized around two powerful themes:

Sustainability in Action: Companies like BASF & Nestlé showcased how TrendMiner drives tangible (environmental) impact—fuel savings, emission reductions, and resource optimization. These aren't aspirational goals; they're measurable outcomes happening right now in production environments.

Scaling and Operationalizing Success: From Umicore's approach to standardization, to Huntsman's continuous improvement through health monitoring, to companies contextualizing performance data across multiple sites—we saw the playbook for taking TrendMiner from single use cases to enterprise-wide impact. The common thread? Start with quick wins, prove the value, get people onboard, then systematically scale across operations.

Our vision resonates strongly

Virtually every company in manufacturing is faced with pressures like an aging workforce, pressure on people in operations and increasing global factors leading to uncertainty. To remain competitive, it’s crucial that as many decisions as possible are data-driven and backed by real facts over gut feeling and intuition.

That’s why our vision to Democratize Industrial AI and Analytics continues to resonate strongly with our customers. While many industrial analytics platforms add layers of complexity—increasing the need for data scientists, coding expertise, and weeks of model building and training just to generate basic insights—TrendMiner takes a different approach. We're obsessed with lowering the barrier to entry without sacrificing power or capability. There's a critical distinction we discussed at TrendLab that struck a chord with our customers: "easy to use" does not mean "simple to build", quite the opposite.

This past year, we've brought game-changing innovations to market that do both: they deliver added capabilities to end users while optimizing platform performance and administration. We're proving you can make advanced analytics intuitive for everyone in operations while keeping the platform versatile for power users.

Customers praised us for defining our lane so precisely and doubling down on what we do well, staying laser-focused on this vision. This vision is also rewarded by external analysts rewarding us with the highest ratings for product vision and business strategy, e.g. in Verdantix’s recent Green Quadrant.

There's No Magic Wand

Making a platform like TrendMiner work isn't magic. It never has been. Success in industrial AI & Analytics requires the classic people-process-technology triangle. You can have one of the most sophisticated analytics platforms in the world (TrendMiner 😉), but without bringing value to the all people involved, and embedding analytics in the core processes, you're just going to have a couple of people staring at dashboards.

Here's what we've learned: the true magic happens when TrendMiner's capabilities meet the human element of process knowledge and contextual insight. We're not trying to replace process engineers or operators—we're amplifying their expertise. We're giving them a tool that gets out of their way and lets them do what they do best: solve problems, optimize processes, and drive improvement.

The Right Kind of AI

Since it’s 2025, we also have to speak about AI—let's address the elephant in the room. Every software company right now is slapping "AI-powered" on their marketing materials.

Our stance at TrendMiner is straightforward: build AI and machine learning where it adds value. Integrate where it makes sense.

One fascinating insight from our sessions: users are comfortable with AI recommendations that are only right 60% of the time—as long as they're not being used in closed-loop control. Why? Because the human stays in the driver's seat. The AI accelerates analysis and surfaces possibilities, but the process engineer applies their expertise and makes the final call.

That's the kind of pragmatic AI that aligns with democratization: tools that augment expertise, not black boxes that replace it.

From Inspiration to Activation
 

Here's what made TrendLab 2025 different than previous editions: we didn't just inspire people—we activated them.

This year, we added hands-on training days to the agenda—both for building scaled-out solutions and for deep-dive administration. The response has been overwhelmingly positive and in return, has energized our team. We’ve already seen customers reach out to work on ideas and projects, which our people thrive on.

The training transformed TrendLab from a showcase into a launchpad. People didn't just leave with inspiration—they left with capability.

The Data Lies
 

Industrial operations are complex. The data is messy, and problems are not black and white but more nuanced than that. Our partner Timeseer discussed the impact of industrial data lies and why it’s important to think about your data as being fit for purpose. Just like a house cannot be be built on shaky foundations, so should your data strategy not depend on weak fundamentals.

As we further embark on our journey to (bow)tie our combined value proposition, we invite our customers who were inspired by this thought leadership section of this TrendLab edition to reach out to our teams to dive a bit deeper into this topic.

What's Next
 

We're doubling down on democratizing industrial AI and analytics. Every feature, every optimization, every design decision—including every AI capability we build or integrate—will be filtered through this vision.

The most sophisticated AI in the world is useless if your process engineers can't use it or don't trust it. And the easiest interface in the world is worthless if it can't handle the complexity of real industrial operations.

We're building for both. We're staying in our lane. And we're doing it with a community of customers who challenge us, inspire us, and prove every day that when you combine great technology with human expertise, that's when the real magic happens.
 

Thank you to everyone who joined us in Cologne and Houston. Your engagement, your questions, your willingness to share your challenges and successes—that's what makes TrendLab special. See you next year.

Fréderick Motte

VP of Customer Success