On-Prem AI Agents for Manufacturing & Industry
Deploy a governed on-premise platform with private RAG over engineering, MES, and quality data, model routing, immutable audit logs & role-based access. Protect IP — align with IEC 62443, ISA-95 & the EU AI Act at 40–60% lower AI cost.
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.
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.
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.
Knowledge Loss
Experienced operators and engineers are retiring. Decades of troubleshooting and setup know-how risk walking out the door undocumented.
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.
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."
Zero external dependencies
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
IEC 62443 · ISA-95 · ISO 9001
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
vs. hosted cloud alternatives
Use cases for manufacturing
Shop-Floor Knowledge Assistant
Semantic search across work instructions, manuals, and maintenance history so operators and technicians get the right answer in seconds — fully cited.
Quality & Defect Analysis
Agents that correlate quality records, summarise defect trends, and assemble 8D / root-cause documentation — with full traceability for audits.
Predictive Maintenance Support
Summarise historian and condition data, correlate anomalies with maintenance records, and prioritise the assets most likely to cause downtime.
SOP & Work-Instruction Drafting
Turn tribal knowledge into standardised, version-controlled procedures — drafted by agents and reviewed by your subject-matter experts.
Supplier & Contract Document Processing
Extract terms, specs, and obligations from supplier documents and POs — accelerating procurement while keeping data on-premise.
Engineering & R&D Knowledge
Let engineers query past designs, test reports, and project history — accelerating new product development without exposing IP.
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) |
What changes after rollout
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.