Caterpillar is deepening its reliance on artificial intelligence to streamline manufacturing and supply chain operations, with the company's chief information officer describing the technology as a tool to enhance human decision-making rather than replace it. Jamie Engstrom, who serves as CIO and senior vice president, leads a global IT organization of more than 2,200 professionals across 28 countries and has made AI a central pillar of the heavy equipment maker's strategic initiatives.
Engstrom's approach applies AI across what she calls a "digital thread" that connects enterprise-level demand planning with supply planning, manufacturing, and operations. Early results include improved quality on factory floors, better labor planning that has reduced variable labor costs, and more effective management of material shortages. "We're seeing some really awesome early benefits," Engstrom said, citing the concrete operational gains already emerging from the company's AI deployments.
Caterpillar has used AI in some capacity for three decades, but Engstrom has accelerated its adoption since taking on her current role. She created the company's IT AI Center of Excellence and partnered with Accenture and Snowflake to extend AI work into manufacturing quality, financial reporting, and supply chain planning. "That is a major part of our strategic initiative and, frankly, where I spend a significant amount of my time," she said.
Under her direction, Caterpillar built an internal data assistant on a Snowflake-based enterprise data foundation, allowing employees to query trusted company data and receive answers in seconds. In June 2026, that work earned Caterpillar Snowflake's AI Innovator Award for the second consecutive year, a recognition of the company's progress in turning raw corporate data into accessible, actionable intelligence for its workforce.
Engstrom has championed an additive rather than reductive approach to AI, arguing that the technology is best used for automating mundane tasks and augmenting human intelligence so workers can focus on more valuable work. She emphasizes the importance of creating a culture of safe experimentation and educating employees about what she calls the "art of the possible." "I think creating the culture [of] safe experimentation, and the education of what the 'art of the possible' is, is where employees are going to embrace it more, versus feeling like AI is going to be a competition to their job," she noted.
Getting workers to buy into reimagining processes with AI is fundamentally a question of trust, Engstrom explained. That trust extends beyond the accuracy and relevance of AI model outputs to include confidence in the processes, guardrails, access, and governance surrounding the technology. "Technology adoption is going to accelerate when our employees trust both the processes, the guardrails, the access, and the governance that we have in place—when they have confidence in the underpinning data to be able to know that the output that they're getting is productive and meaningful for them," she said.
Engstrom's personal motto, "We reserve the right to work smarter tomorrow," reflects her organization's commitment to continuous learning as AI advances and Caterpillar's business evolves. The company's experience illustrates how traditional industrial manufacturers are increasingly positioning AI not as a workforce replacement but as a complement to human expertise, with the goal of improving efficiency and quality across complex global operations.