Beyond the Buzzword: How Packaging Leaders Can Make AI Work Across the Enterprise
If you attended the Flexible Packaging Association’s (FPA) 2026 Annual Meeting, you probably noticed something. Conversations about artificial intelligence (AI) were happening everywhere, not just in some of the formal sessions. AI was front and center. And the discussions were not about whether AI matters; they were about what to do with it. That shift is significant. For years, the flexible packaging industry has watched the AI conversation unfold from a comfortable distance. We are a hands-on industry. We build things. We solve real problems for real supply chains. When AI showed up promising to “transform everything,” a healthy dose of skepticism was warranted. But here is where we are now: The early hype has settled, the experiments have played out, and a much more practical conversation is emerging. Not “What can AI do?” but “How does AI actually help my strategic, commercial, leadership, and operations teams do their jobs better?”