If you’re heading to MD&M South 2026 in Charlotte next week, we’ll be on the Advanced Manufacturing Stage on Wednesday April 22.
Our Software Engineer and Solutions Specialist Tom McQuade will be co-presenting with Jeff Gentry, Staff Engineer of Global Operations at Shaw Industries, in a session titled “From Pilot to Plant: A Real-World Journey to Scalable AI in Manufacturing.”
Wednesday, April 22 · 2:30–3:00 PM ET · Charlotte Convention Center
The session draws directly on Shaw and Accella AI’s experience deploying an AI vision system for automated pallet verification at Shaw’s loading dock — replacing manual barcode scanning with a deep learning platform that verifies every case on every pallet in seconds.
Tom and Jeff will walk through what the journey from pilot to production actually looks like: the technical build, the integration challenges, the cybersecurity trade-offs, and what it takes to get operator buy-in on the shop floor. This is not a polished, prettied-up success story but recounts the realities of an AI implementation from vision to realization – including the hard parts.
If you want to go deeper on the story before the session, the full case study is on our blog: How Shaw Industries Replaced Manual Dock Checks with AI Vision.
Can’t make it to Charlotte? Get in touch — we’re happy to walk you through the Shaw deployment and what it might mean for your operation.
Tom McQuade is Accella AI’s Software Engineer and Solutions Specialist. Jeff Gentry is Staff Engineer of Global Operations at Shaw Industries. Their joint session is part of the Advanced Manufacturing Stage program at MD&M South 2026.