IFS Puts Hard Hats On ‘Industrial AI’ Workforce

Product differentiation proliferates across all sectors. We segment our goods and services into different classes, the business world likes to differentiate across different industry verticals, then there is a basic clarification (in most markets) as to whether a commercial offering of any kind should be demarcated as either a business or a consumer product.

In the world of artificial intelligence, we separate out product differentiation in a more applied way by virtue of what any individual piece of AI is supposed to do for us. There’s reactive AI that responds to stimuli in as close to real-time as it can, predictive AI which (as it sounds) aims to create predictions based on pattern recognition from past events… and of course there is generative AI, which is quietly taking over a new role as a generator/creator in various roles.

Forging Industrial AI

While the cloud services provision sector is keen to differentiate between general-purpose clouds and industry-specific services (such as a marketing cloud for instance), the next iteration of AI reflects this trend could see it named after the environment that it works in, rather than the precise job or tasks it performs. That’s if enterprise cloud services platform company IFS has its way; the company has set about attempting to coin the term “industrial AI” as a homage to its enterprise resource management and field service management heritage, along with its essentially hands-on approach to working with mission-critical assets and processes.

With ambitions to further its stance in this space, IFS has now acquired Silicon Valley-headquartered agentic AI specialist theLoops. IFS insists that its acquisition of theLoops marks a shift from enterprise software that tracks work, to building and deploying functional software that actually performs workplace jobs, tasks and wider workflows within the context of real-world operational enterprises.

According to Mark Moffat, Chief Executive Officer, IFS, this is not a digital buddy, virtual assistant or some form of quirky workplace chatbot with a smart robotic process automation underbelly. This, he says, is an enterprise-grade agentic AI platform with security and governance, designed to deliver what he pledges to be “radical productivity improvements and measurable return on investment” in applied industrial settings.

With a promise to deliver what he calls “real value capture” in working industrial environments, Moffat says that the addition of this newly acquired agentic AI firm will help create digital teammates who can perform real work functions across industries spanning manufacturing, energy, utilities, construction and engineering, as well as aerospace and defense. “These industrial agentic AI ‘workers’ understand their business responsibilities from day one; they are agents that speak the industrial language appropriate to the industry they are located in. They can follow rules and operate securely in their workflows,” said Moffat.

Semantic Environmental Awareness

TheLoops acquisition will enable IFS to create and deliver multi-agent environments where autonomous AI agents are both composable and governed. They will be “semantically aware of their operating environment” and so eminently suited to being applied in regulated, asset-intensive sectors. The industrial AI agents IFS now envisages (IFS would say enabling) will be able to participate in real enterprise workflows side-by-side with humans; adhere to customer-defined security, data access, and compliance standards; and outwardly collaborate with specialized agents across integrated domains.

“AI is disrupting our world, but nowhere is the potential impact more pronounced than in the Industrial setting. IFS’s acquisition of theLoops is addressing a huge opportunity for asset-intensive and service-obsessed industries, where agentic decision making will enable organizations to rethink their digital workforce, so they can improve the way they serve their own customers. IFS is well-positioned to lead this shift in each of the industries it serves – bringing intelligent automation that’s not just smart, but situationally aware and operationally impactful,” suggested Aly Pinder, research vice president for aftermarket services strategies, IDC

Somya Kapoor, CEO of theLoops (who now retains her position inside of IFS) has spoken of what she thinks could be a new era of automation, where intelligent agents never rest – continuously scanning for improvements, making and executing critical decisions.to streamline operations, increase capacity and free up skilled workers for higher-value tasks. According to Kapoor, this goes beyond traditional AI’s pattern recognition and prediction to enable truly autonomous decision-making and execution.

“We’re creating autonomous AI agents that understand industrial complexity. They identify required work, determine execution pathways and implement software services with rigorous standards for security, ethics and scale.. This isn’t experimental; it’s transformational,” said Kapoor.

Industrial AI, Competitive Analysis

IFS has championed the industrial AI tagline or slogan for a while now, but can the firm lay claim to any substantial degree of genuine leadership in this domain? Certainly, the company is structured not just as an ERP provider, but also as specialist in field service management, enterprise asset management and human capital management with manufacturing project management functions manifesting themselves across its platform toolset. That rather leads the firm not just to be a systems of record and systems of transaction company (how the industry normally categorizes a core ERP player), but also a systems of operations specialist for real world factory floors.

But despite that bedrock focus, IFS isn’t the only IT vendor known for industrial software technologies. You don’t have to look far to find German-born industrial automation company Siemens. My first job was with Siemens in its radar division, but the company is mentioned here for its MindSphere internet of things AI platform and its pedigree in digital twins, smart factories.

Staying in Germany, Schneider Electric probably wouldn’t be offended to be referred to as a smart buildings and industrial automation company. Its AI services are aligned towards tasks including energy management and smart manufacturing. The firm is also known for its EcoStruxure platform, an open and interoperable technology architecture built to bring digitized services energy management and operation control systems.

It was a decade ago that stories focused on General Electric (GE Digital) and its Predix platform as detailed here. To reiterate the capabilities found pat GE, Predix.io works to help connect industrial assets across the internet of things and the wider world of machinery and equipment to to the cloud and to each other. It does this for asset performance management and operations optimization, not dissimilar to the focus currently seen at IFS.

Other contenders in this market include ABB, known for its process optimization technologies and AI-powered robotics. Bosch doesn’t just make handdrills and drillbits, it also makes industrial automation and mobility products. More centalized on industrial AI for tasks like redictive maintenance and asset performance are Uptake, C3.ai and SparkCognition.

As an additional note, remember that IBM has a specific iteration of Watson AI for industrial applications; Microsoft has Azure AI for industrial analytics (working in partnership with companies including Honeywell); Google Cloud has services dedicated to AI-enhanced vision-based inspection in industrial settings and AWS has its Lookout for Equipment and Lookout for Vision brands for automated quality inspection.

A New Industrial Agent?

Has IFS actually come forward with a new class of agentic AI here? The naysayer might say it is potentially possible to custom-align any form of agentic service into any job or task, that’s why agentic services are always described as essentially non-deterministic, capable of drawing data resources from any source (both small and large language models) and remain adaptable on an ongoing basis.

Conversely, a more positive view might suggest yes, this is industrial AI because there are ERP and field service management companies aplenty, but few have defined their target verticals to be as narrowly dedicated as IFS has (key sectors for the company are named above, but think aerospace and engineering from first principles), which is a focus that IFS has “positively restricted” its focus to for many years.

To apply a standardized agentic AI service that works in a call center and stick it on an oil rig operations center is not always sensible; it takes more than a crowbar (virtual or real) to make that happen. This is not chatbots and copilots, this is a case of AI agents with yellow hard hats.

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