Murugan Boominathan on how Magna is managing digital change across complex operations

At Automotive Manufacturing North America, Murugan Boominathan of Magna International offered a measured but revealing view into how one of the world’s largest automotive suppliers is navigating the realities of digital transformation across a highly decentralised manufacturing network.

Rather than focusing on technology alone, Boominathan framed transformation as a long-term organisational challenge, one that must contend with deeply embedded processes, established ways of working and a workforce that is understandably cautious about change. Resistance, he suggested, is not an obstacle to be eliminated but a signal that change needs to be paced, structured and earned.

Magna’s response has been to avoid sweeping rollouts in favour of smaller, deliberately scoped initiatives that allow teams on the shopfloor to engage directly with new digital tools. These early pilots are less about proving technology and more about building familiarity and trust. How those pilots are chosen, how they evolve and how they are ultimately scaled across sites is a central theme of the discussion, but one that only becomes fully clear through Boominathan’s examples.

The conversation also touches on one of manufacturing’s most persistent challenges: making cross-functional collaboration work in practice. With multiple product lines and highly specialised operations, Magna cannot rely on generic solutions or uniform templates. Boominathan explains why the company starts with process rather than technology, and how aligning materials, quality, production and logistics functions early can determine whether digital initiatives succeed or stall. The tension between local optimisation and enterprise-wide standardisation sits just beneath the surface throughout.

Legacy IT systems are another recurring thread. Boominathan is candid about the limits of wholesale replacement strategies and outlines why Magna has taken a more pragmatic path. Rather than chasing clean-sheet architectures, the focus has been on connectivity, data alignment and coexistence. How far this can be pushed, and where the real constraints lie, is left deliberately open.

Finally, the discussion turns to software strategy and the idea of digital transformation as an ongoing condition rather than a defined programme. Magna’s position on in-house development versus commercial platforms resists easy categorisation, hinting at a more flexible philosophy shaped by operational reality.

For those looking beyond buzzwords to understand how large, complex manufacturers are actually managing digital change on the ground, the full conversation offers valuable insight — and raises just as many questions as it answers.