Connected Manufacturing today announced the launch of Connected Manufacturing Agents for Regulated Industries, a new generation of governed AI agents built for regulated manufacturing environments.
Connected Manufacturing Agents are designed to help manufacturers monitor operational signals, investigate issues, gather evidence, recommend next steps, and escalate decisions to qualified humans. The first generation focuses on five high-value functional areas: quality, yield, maintenance, downtime, and root cause analysis.
Unlike generic AI tools or open-ended chatbot automation, Connected Manufacturing Agents are built around regulated workflow needs: secure customer data access, role-based permissions, evidence capture, auditability, and human-in-the-loop review.
Secure data. Role-based access. Human-in-the-loop by design.
“Regulated manufacturers do not need AI that wanders freely across systems or makes unsupported recommendations,” said William Hearne O’Sullivan, CEO of Connected Manufacturing. “They need governed agents that can help teams find issues faster, gather the right evidence, and route decisions to the people accountable for quality, compliance, and operational performance. Connected Manufacturing Agents are designed for that reality: practical plant workflows, secure data access, role-based controls, and human review where it matters.”
Manufacturers often struggle to connect information across MES, QMS, ERP, PLM, maintenance systems, supplier records, historians, shift notes, and spreadsheets. A quality issue may require inspection records from one system, batch data from another, asset history from another, and supplier data from another. Connected Manufacturing Agents help reduce that manual search burden by organizing relevant signals into workflow-ready evidence for human review.
Early agent workflows are designed to support practical questions such as:
“What defects increased in the last 24 hours?”
“Where is yield drifting?”
“What downtime pattern is repeating?”
“What changed before this quality issue?”
“What evidence should we review before escalating this issue?”
“What is the likely root cause, and what should be investigated next?”
Connected Manufacturing provides Agents as an orchestration layer across the manufacturing closed loop: Design, Execute, Measure, and Improve. Conversational AI helps teams ask questions. Governed Agents go further by helping coordinate action across connected systems, while keeping regulated decisions under human control.
The launch is also tied to Connected Manufacturing’s 90-Day Design Partner Program, which invites qualified manufacturers to work with the company on one focused, high-value use case. Design partners can explore areas such as quality investigation, root cause analysis, yield loss, downtime reduction, maintenance intelligence, and compliance evidence gathering to tune agents to their unique circumstances.
The program is designed as a narrow, timeboxed, measurable initiative. Each engagement focuses on a defined workflow, approved data sources, role-based access, human review checkpoints, and measurable business value.
Connected Manufacturing Agents are especially relevant for manufacturers in industries where quality, compliance, uptime, customer commitments, and audit readiness matter. This includes life sciences, medical devices, aerospace, automotive, electronics, industrial equipment, and other regulated or quality-sensitive manufacturing environments.
Availability
Connected Manufacturing is now accepting applications for its 90-Day Design Partner Program. Interested manufacturers can talk to Connected Manufacturing about becoming a design partner or request an agent demo.
About Connected Manufacturing
Connected Manufacturing helps manufacturers build and operate the closed loop from Design to Execute to Measure to Improve. The company works with regulated and complex manufacturers to connect systems, improve manufacturing intelligence, and deliver practical operational improvements across PLM, MOM/MES, analytics, hosting, services, and AI-enabled workflows.
Call to Action
Talk to Us About Becoming a Design Partner
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260804775977/en/
Media gallery
