The WEF Quantum Report of October 2025: Quantum Technologies in Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chains – A Critical Review

The World Economic Forum (WEF) and Accenture's 2025 white-paper Quantum Technologies: Key Opportunities for Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chains presents quantum computing, sensing, and security as near-term levers for industrial transformation. This critical review evaluates those claims against the current peer-reviewed literature and independent industry benchmarks. The analysis finds that quantum security (post-quantum cryptography, PQC) and selected sensing applications (e.g., dimensional metrology) are approaching commercial readiness (TRL 6–7). By contrast, the report's expectations for quantum-computing optimisation are heavily constrained by the limitations of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. The intrinsic NP-hard nature of large-scale manufacturing scheduling, together with technical barriers in sensor ruggedisation, high total cost of ownership (TCO), and an estimated talent gap covering less than 5 % of projected demand (Greinert et al., 2023), suggest that the WEF's timelines for broad industrial adoption are overly optimistic. The review concludes with recommendations for practitioners: focus pilot investments on quantum security and narrowly scoped sensing use cases, while maintaining a patient, long-term outlook for quantum-computing advantage.