01The systems in the way
MES speaks OPC-UA, SCADA speaks Modbus, the ERP exposes a partial API covering the parts you do not need, the QMS exposes nothing, and maintenance is tracked in a spreadsheet that one person owns. Quality engineers reconcile all of it by hand, usually after the fact, which is exactly when it is least useful.
| System | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| MES | OPC-UA |
| ERP | partial API |
| SCADA | Modbus |
| Supplier portal | web only |
| QMS | no API |
| Maintenance | spreadsheet |
02Why the usual approaches stall
Plant-wide data platforms promise to unify this and take a year to land. Meanwhile the actual daily loss is somebody chasing a supplier through a web portal for a certificate that should have arrived with the shipment. That gap does not need a platform; it needs an agent that can operate the portal.
If a human can do it in a browser or a terminal, an agent can do it — at volume, with an audit trail. That is the whole basis of how we approach manufacturing: we treat the systems you already run as the integration surface, rather than waiting for an API that is never going to ship.
03What an agent actually does here
Worked example
A quality agent watches MES and QMS signals, chases suppliers through their own portals, and files non-conformance reports with the measurement evidence attached — so the report exists on the day the deviation happened, not at month end.
This is a reference design drawn from the problems we are asked about most often in manufacturing — not a case study of delivered client work. Where we have shipped a build, we say so plainly and put you in touch with the client.
04Constraints we design to
- Runs on the plant network; no requirement to send process data outside the site
- Offline-capable builds for sites with intermittent connectivity
- Read-only against control systems by default — writes to SCADA are never assumed
- Every non-conformance carries the measurement trace that triggered it
Tell us which system is the problem
Describe the workflow that is done by hand today and the system that blocks it. We will come back within one working day with an initial read on feasibility — including if the honest answer is that an agent is the wrong tool.
Scope your agent →