MES, ERP and production records
Orders, routings, work centers, line status, inventory, and shift context feed the plan without changing systems of record.
Manufacturing Agentic OS Control Plane
Manufacturing AI agents that turn factory objectives into governed execution
VDF.AI sits above MES, ERP, PLM, QMS, historian, CMMS, supplier, and document systems. State the manufacturing objective and the OS activates the right agents, tools, review gates, and audit trail while protecting IP and respecting OT boundaries.
6Manufacturing workflows across shop floor, quality, assets & suppliers
0Core MES, ERP, PLM or QMS migrations required
100%On-premise or sovereign cloud for sensitive IP
Every runCited, permissioned, reviewed and audit logged
Built for the factory
EU AI Act GDPR IEC 62443 ISA-95 ISO 27001 ISO 9001
Manufacturing control plane
Factory intelligence in. Governed control plane. Shop-floor execution out.
VDF.AI sits above MES, ERP, PLM, QMS, historian, CMMS, supplier, and document systems as the orchestration layer. Your systems stay in place while agents convert plant objectives into governed actions, cited evidence, and auditable decisions.
01 Intelligence in 02 Control plane 03 Agents and tools 04 Execution out
Intelligence in
PLM and engineering knowledge
CAD notes, test history, design files, ECOs, and R&D documents become searchable inside your IP boundary.
QMS and defect evidence
Nonconformance reports, CAPA history, inspection records, and 8D files turn into live quality intelligence.
Historian, CMMS and EAM signals
Condition readings, work orders, downtime logs, and maintenance history are correlated for asset prioritization.
Supplier and contract documents
Supplier specs, certificates, purchase terms, deviations, and compliance records are extracted with provenance.
Live governed execution
VDF AI - Manufacturing - Model agnostic - Sovereign cloud - Any LLM
Manufacturing Agentic OS Control Plane
Objective engine, IP governance, OT-aware orchestration, agent registry, memory, and feedback across production, quality, assets, and suppliers.
Manufacturing objective engine
State the target: reduce downtime, improve first-pass yield, accelerate SOP updates, or cut supplier review cycle time.
IP, quality and OT-boundary gates
Controls enforce read-only OT access, quality review, plant permissions, and human approval before consequential action.
Orchestration
Factory agent router
Ranks the plan by line, asset, material, supplier, risk, and approval path, then activates the right agents and tools.
Shop-floor knowledge pod
Answers operator questions from approved manuals, work instructions, and incident history with citations.
Quality and RCA pod
Surfaces defect patterns, drafts 8D context, and prepares corrective-action evidence for quality review.
Predictive maintenance pod
Correlates historian anomalies with maintenance history and prioritizes assets likely to interrupt production.
SOP and supplier pod
Drafts SOPs, work instructions, supplier summaries, and obligation extracts with reviewer sign-off.
Sovereign factory execution fabric
Runs on-premise or in private cloud with approved models, private retrieval, customer keys, and no training on your IP.
Audit ledger and institutional memory
Every run preserves evidence, reviewer decisions, reusable troubleshooting patterns, and quality positions.
Execution out
Operators answered
Cited work-instruction and troubleshooting answers reach the line in seconds.
Defects investigated
Quality evidence, similar failures, and likely root causes are assembled for review.
Assets prioritized
Maintenance planners see asset risk, next-best action, and evidence behind the recommendation.
SOPs drafted
Procedures and work instructions are drafted from approved context and routed for SME approval.
Supplier docs processed
Specifications, certificates, clauses, and deviations are extracted with traceable evidence.
R&D knowledge reused
Engineering teams find prior designs, tests, lessons, and risk context without exposing IP.
From objective to outcome
How manufacturing operations transform
The control plane starts with an operating objective, not a chatbot prompt, then selects the evidence, agents, approval gates, and output path needed to deliver it.
- 1
Your plant systems stay in place
MES, ERP, PLM, QMS, historians, CMMS, EAM, and supplier portals remain the systems of record. VDF.AI reads through governed connectors and leaves production control boundaries intact.
Zero rip-and-replace - 2
The business objective builds the plan
Ask to reduce downtime on a line, shorten CAPA cycle time, update SOPs across plants, or accelerate supplier review. The OS returns an execution plan by system, risk, and reviewer.
Objective-first execution - 3
Agents activate inside plant rules
Knowledge, quality, maintenance, supplier, and documentation agents operate within RBAC, read-only OT access, quality review, and human approval limits.
Autonomy by workflow - 4
The OS documents what changed
Every answer, document, insight, and recommendation includes source evidence, reviewer decisions, cost, and a traceable audit record.
Explainable at execution
The Industry Challenge
The AI dilemma in manufacturing
Your factories generate enormous value from engineering knowledge, process data, and quality records. AI can put that knowledge at every operator's fingertips — but not if it means uploading your designs and trade secrets to a public model.
01
IP & Trade-Secret Risk
Designs, process recipes, and supplier terms are your edge. Routing them through a hosted LLM risks leakage and training on your most valuable data.
02
OT Security & Segmentation
IEC 62443 and ISA-95 require strict zoning. AI must advise from the IT side without ever reaching into control systems on the plant floor.
03
Knowledge Loss
Experienced operators and engineers are retiring. Decades of troubleshooting and setup know-how risk walking out the door undocumented.
04
Document & System Sprawl
Work instructions, drawings, quality records, and MES/ERP data sit in silos. Operators can't find the right answer fast enough during a line stoppage.
The VDF AI Solution
AI on the shop floor that keeps your IP in-house
Data Sovereignty
Complete Data Sovereignty
Your IP never leaves the building.
Deploy VDF AI entirely on-premises or in your private cloud. No external API calls. No designs, process parameters, or supplier data traveling to third-party servers — and nothing training someone else's model. Your most valuable IP stays exactly where engineering and legal require it.
"Legal signed off the moment they understood nothing leaves our network. Our designs never touch a public model."
100%
On-Premises Deployment
Zero external dependencies
Air-gap readyCustomer-managed keysNo model training on your data
Governance
Governance & Quality Built-In
Aligned to IEC 62443, ISA-95 & ISO 9001.
VDF AI provides the governance infrastructure regulated and certified manufacturers need:
- Complete Audit Trails — every query, retrieval, and response logged with full context for quality and EU AI Act review
- Read-Only OT Access — governed, read-only access to MES/historian; no commands to control systems
- Access Controls — role-based permissions aligned to ISA-95 levels and IEC 62443 zoning
- Versioned Knowledge — controlled work instructions and SOPs with change history for ISO 9001
- Model Governance — track which models are used, when, and for what purpose
Audit-grade
Governance Ready
IEC 62443 · ISA-95 · ISO 9001
Immutable logsVersioned SOPsZone-aware RBAC
Cost Control
Intelligent Cost Management
AI economics that fit a cost-down culture.
Manufacturing runs on continuous improvement and margin. VDF AI delivers:
- Per-Operation Cost Tracking — know exactly what each task costs across plants and functions
- Model Routing Optimization — route routine lookups to small models, reserve frontier models for complex analysis
- Budget Controls — set limits by plant, line, or use case
- ROI Reporting — tie AI assistance to downtime reduction, scrap, and first-time-right
- 40–60% Cost Reduction — compared to traditional cloud AI approaches
40–60%
Cost Savings
vs. hosted cloud alternatives
Per-op trackingTier-aware routingBudget guardrails
Where it pays back
Use cases for manufacturing
VDF AI agents and tools
Improve manufacturing workflows with agent-tool networks
Each workflow combines a focused manufacturing agent pattern with the tools needed to retrieve evidence, analyze signals, draft controlled documents, and preserve the audit trail.
Operator assist
Shop-floor knowledge assistant
Operators query manuals, work instructions, quality notes, and past stoppages with citations and plant-level access control.
Enterprise Search Agent
Private RAGCitation VerifyPermission Check
Explore workflow Quality review Quality and defect analysis
Agents correlate defects, inspection data, CAPA history, and similar failures to prepare review-ready RCA evidence.
Risk Classification Agent
CSV AnalyzerSource CrosscheckReport Compile
Explore workflow Planner assist Predictive maintenance support
Historian, CMMS, and downtime data are summarized into prioritized asset-risk briefs for maintenance teams.
Chart Generator Agent
Anomaly DetectSpreadsheet GeneratorReport Compile
Explore workflow SME approved SOP and work-instruction drafting
Procedures are drafted from approved knowledge and routed to experts before publication into controlled-document workflows.
Writing Assistant Agent
Document GeneratorCitation VerifyHuman Approval
Explore workflow Procurement assist Supplier and contract processing
Supplier documents, POs, certificates, and obligations are extracted, compared, and prepared for procurement or quality sign-off.
Document Analysis Agent
OCR ExtractionDocument GeneratorAudit Trail
Explore workflow IP protected Engineering and R&D knowledge
Engineers find prior experiments, design tradeoffs, test reports, and lessons learned without moving sensitive IP to a public model.
Enterprise Search Agent
Private RAGPermission CheckCitation Verify
Explore workflow Under the hood
Technical specifications for manufacturing
| Requirement | VDF AI Capability |
|---|---|
| On-premise deployment | Full on-premises, private-cloud, sovereign-cloud, or air-gapped deployment options |
| IP protection | Designs, recipes & trade secrets stay in-house — no external API calls, no training on your data |
| OT separation | Runs on the IT side of the ISA-95 hierarchy — advisory only, no control-system commands |
| Private RAG | Work instructions, drawings, quality records & manuals stay on-premise inside your governed vector-store boundary |
| Role-based access | RBAC-scoped agents, tools & knowledge aligned to ISA-95 levels and IEC 62443 zoning |
| Model routing | Tier-aware routing keeps routine lookups on smaller models — frontier models reserved for complex analysis |
| Audit logs | Immutable audit logs for prompts, retrievals, tool calls & responses — SIEM export & long-term custody |
| Integration examples | Read-only MES/ERP (SAP-style), PLM, historian & document/PLM systems via MCP adapters |
| Encryption | At-rest and in-transit, customer-managed keys |
| Authentication | SSO, LDAP, Active Directory, MFA |
| Uptime SLA | 99.9% (Enterprise tier) |
ROI Snapshot
What changes after rollout
−45%
Troubleshooting & lookup time
40–60%
Lower AI operating costs vs. cloud
10×
Faster document processing
−50%
SOP authoring & update time
FAQ
Questions manufacturing teams ask
How does VDF.AI protect manufacturing IP, designs, and trade secrets?
VDF.AI deploys fully on-premise, so proprietary designs, CAD/PLM data, process recipes, and trade secrets never leave your perimeter or train someone else's model. There are no external API calls. Combined with role-based access, immutable audit logs, and customer-managed encryption keys, your most valuable IP stays inside the four walls — which is exactly what makes AI on the shop floor acceptable to engineering and legal.
Is VDF.AI aligned with IEC 62443, ISA-95, and the EU AI Act?
Yes. VDF.AI runs on the enterprise/IT side of the ISA-95 hierarchy with governed, read-only access to MES/ERP and historian data, aligns with IEC 62443 OT-security zoning, and provides the audit trails and explainability the EU AI Act expects for any high-risk use. It supports ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 quality-documentation workflows, and runs air-gapped where required.
Can VDF.AI help capture knowledge from retiring engineers and operators?
Absolutely. A major use case is turning tribal knowledge — troubleshooting know-how, setup procedures, and root-cause history — into searchable, governed knowledge. Agents draft and standardise SOPs and work instructions from existing documentation and interviews, and your experts review before anything is published, so institutional knowledge survives workforce turnover.
Why on-premise AI instead of a hosted cloud provider for manufacturing?
Hosted providers require sending prompts and document fragments to third-party infrastructure. For manufacturers, that risks exposing designs, process parameters, supplier terms, and (for defense work) export-controlled data. On-premise AI keeps engineering knowledge, quality data, and IP inside your boundary — no third-party access, no cross-border transfer questions, no surprise terms-of-service changes.
Ready to deploy AI without risking your IP?
Talk to our team about your shop-floor, quality, and engineering requirements.