How the Adoption Barometer works
The Barometer tracks 13 AI technologies across supply chain and logistics. Each one carries a qualitative adoption stage backed by verified production deployments — never an invented percentage. This page describes exactly how those stages are assigned and what the ranking means.
The three stages
Standard practice among tier-1 operators. Multiple large companies run the technology in production at scale, and industry reports confirm broad deployment.
Past the proof stage. Several named companies operate it in production, but it is not yet the default way the industry works.
First verified production deployments exist — beyond pilots — but deployers are still few and concentrated among early adopters.
Stages are editorial judgments — deliberately qualitative. Publishing a precise adoption percentage would require survey data we do not have, so we do not publish one. A technology moves up a stage only when new verified deployments accumulate; stage transitions are tracked week over week in our KPI reports.
The conviction score
Conviction score = adoption stage (×1 / ×2 / ×3) × confirmed deployers in production
The ranking on the Barometer orders technologies by this score. The deployer count is computed from the tracked deployments themselves — it is never a hardcoded number. When a company is added to a technology's deployment list, the count, the score and the ranking all update mechanically.
What counts as evidence
Counted
- A production deployment confirmed by a public company announcement, or by a named industry report.
- A pilot — counted and labeled as a pilot, never as a deployment.
- A figure that appears verbatim in the cited source.
Never published
- Invented or extrapolated adoption percentages.
- Market-size forecasts presented as facts.
- Vendor marketing claims without a named customer.
- Any statement that cannot be traced to its public source.
Every case study on the Barometer links to its public source — a company announcement, a filing, or a named industry report. One editorial rule governs the whole site: if it is not in the original source, we do not say it.
Update cadence
The underlying data files are updated weekly as new deployments are verified. Data last updated July 10, 2026 — this date is computed from the newest item in the dataset, not typed by hand.
See the Barometer