LevelOps joins QuébecTech in Sherbrooke for the Journée stratégique Innovation et Productivité, sharing real AI use cases for Quebec SMEs.
LevelOps joined QuébecTech in Sherbrooke as part of the QuébecTech Networking Tour during the Journée stratégique : Innovation & Productivité. The event was organized in collaboration with Entreprendre Sherbrooke, Économie Estrie, and the Maison régionale de l'industrie.
The day brought together entrepreneurs, manufacturers, technologists, and innovation leaders from across the Estrie region, all focused on helping SMEs discover new ways to boost productivity through automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, and modern operational systems.
What we see every week with manufacturing and tech companies is clear: technology amplifies performance only when the underlying structure is strong. While emerging technologies offer powerful opportunities, many SMEs still struggle with adoption, not because the technology isn't ready, but because their internal execution systems aren't.
LevelOps shared real AI use cases from client work, showing how practical, targeted automation (not sweeping digital transformation projects) delivers the fastest ROI for manufacturing and distribution SMEs.
Events like this confirm what we see in the field every day: Quebec manufacturers are ready to move. The appetite for operational improvement is real. The missing piece is usually a structured approach to identifying where automation creates the most value, which is exactly what LevelOps helps clients do.
Maxime Lavoie
Founder & CEO, LevelOps
Industrial engineer by training. Former Deloitte supply-chain consultant. Former VP Operations at Goodfood Market. Now writes the ERP, MRP and B2B order playbooks he wishes had existed in 2018.
Operations
LevelOps' Operational Excellence framework for AI success: Team, Process, and Tools. Before bringing in AI, get the fundamentals right.
Operations
The second pillar of LevelOps' Operational Excellence framework: building clear, aligned, and measurable processes before automating anything.
Operations
The first pillar of LevelOps' Operational Excellence framework: why AI success starts with people. Clear roles, the right skills, accountability.
It was a QuébecTech Networking Tour stop held in Sherbrooke, organized in collaboration with Entreprendre Sherbrooke, Économie Estrie, and the Maison régionale de l'industrie. It gathered entrepreneurs, manufacturers, technologists, and innovation leaders from across the Estrie region. The focus was on how SMEs can raise productivity through automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, and modern operational systems.
Real AI use cases taken from client work rather than a vendor overview. The point of those examples was that practical, targeted automation delivers ROI faster than a sweeping digital transformation program, particularly for manufacturing and distribution SMEs.
Because the blocker is usually internal, not technical. Technology amplifies performance only when the structure underneath it is solid, so a company with unclear processes and weak execution systems gets amplified noise instead of output. That is why we look at the process before the tool.
One narrow, repetitive, high volume step, automated end to end, with the rest of the operation left alone. Reading incoming purchase orders and turning them into Shopify draft orders that a person approves is a good example: it is a single handoff, it happens every day, and it does not require rebuilding any other system.
The appetite for operational improvement is real and Quebec manufacturers are ready to move. What is usually missing is not willingness or budget but a structured way to identify where automation actually creates value.
Start from volume and repetition rather than from the technology. List the steps your team repeats every week, note how long each one takes and how often it goes wrong, then automate the ones at the top of both lists first. That ranking is the structured approach we walk clients through.
Book a short demo with a real purchase order and we run it live on your own data.
