70% of Manufacturers Still Run Compliance on Spreadsheets

Seven in ten manufacturers still manage product compliance with manual spreadsheets, even as regulatory and customer demands accelerate, according to Assent Inc.'s "2026 Product Compliance & Sustainability Trend Study."

The Ontario-based manufacturing data network provider surveyed 131 manufacturing specialists in partnership with Pforzheim University in Germany. The results show an industry highly engaged on compliance but poorly equipped to act on it.

Three in four respondents — 75% — said they work hands-on with product compliance and sustainability programs daily. Yet 70% still rely on spreadsheets to manage the process. Engagement is not the problem. Tooling is.

What is holding manufacturers back?

Incomplete data and data integrity rank as the single greatest challenge for 57% of respondents in meeting compliance and sustainability reporting requirements. That gap spans automotive, electronics and other manufacturing sectors, all reporting the same manual, reactive approach to compliance work.

The stakes reach beyond a single filing. Emerging obligations such as Digital Product Passports and carbon reporting increasingly draw on the same supplier data that already feeds material compliance declarations. One weak supplier response, in other words, can create risk across multiple regulatory domains simultaneously.

Carbon data quality exposes the problem most clearly. More than half of respondents — 55% — cite data quality and timeliness as the reason their supply chain carbon data fails to meet internal standards.

Why does AI adoption lag the hype?

Artificial intelligence and automation rank as the biggest opportunity manufacturers see ahead. Only 10% have actually incorporated AI into their processes. The gap between ambition and deployment is a data problem, not a software problem.

Assent's own analysis backs that reading. Companies that have already connected their product, part and supplier data are far more optimistic about AI: 72% of firms with integrated systems see AI as an opportunity, against just 48% of those without integrated systems.

"This research confirms what we hear from manufacturers every day: They know AI and automation are the next step for product compliance and sustainability, but incomplete data is holding them back," said Catherine Cormier, Chief Innovation Officer at Assent. "The path forward isn't more point solutions; it's a connected foundation of part, product, and supplier data that can be augmented with AI capabilities. Together, they empower teams to achieve compliance and sustainability goals."

What does this mean for supply chain teams?

In Assent's view, the fix is not buying more software. It is building a better data foundation for existing software to run on. Firms that consolidate part, product and supplier data into connected systems position themselves to automate compliance declarations, carbon reporting and passport-ready disclosures from a single source.

For manufacturers still on spreadsheets, the survey points to a widening split. Integrated-data companies are nearly 1.5 times more likely to view AI as an opening rather than a threat, and they face fewer single points of failure when one supplier's data goes bad.

The survey numbers suggest the manual era of compliance management is drawing to a close, with 57% of specialists naming data integrity as their top challenge and regulatory regimes such as Digital Product Passports set to demand connected, verifiable supplier data at scale.