Manufacturing Around the World Gets Smarter with AI Agents

This week brought major news for factories and manufacturing plants worldwide. A software company called IFS held a big event called Industrial X Unleashed in New York City on November 13, 2025. At this event, IFS announced several groundbreaking partnerships that will bring intelligent AI agents directly into manufacturing environments. These aren't just regular software programs. They're autonomous systems designed to think, learn, and make decisions the way experienced factory workers do.

The Star Product: Resolve

The headline product is called Resolve, and it's powered by Claude, an advanced AI from a company called Anthropic. Resolve is designed to help factory workers predict and prevent equipment failures before they happen. Here's how it works: Resolve watches videos, listens to sounds, and reads sensor data that measures things like temperature and pressure. It can also look at complex technical drawings and blueprints. By analyzing all this information together, Resolve spots warning signs that human eyes might miss, helping factories avoid expensive breakdowns. This is a perfect example of an agentic AI system because it actively monitors situations, makes decisions, and recommends actions without constantly asking humans what to do.

Robots Join the Factory Floor

IFS also announced a partnership with 1X Technologies, a company that makes humanoid robots. This partnership opens the door for these robots to work alongside humans in real manufacturing environments. Imagine a robot that can handle dangerous or repetitive tasks while AI agents manage the overall factory operations. This combination of physical robots and intelligent software represents the next level of autonomous manufacturing. These aren't science fiction ideas anymore—they're being tested in real factories right now.

Grids and Power Systems Get Intelligent

Another big announcement involves factories and power systems. IFS partnered with Siemens Grid Software, a company in Germany, to create what they're calling an intelligent autonomous grid. This uses AI agents to plan investments in power infrastructure and decide when to upgrade grid systems. For manufacturing plants that depend on reliable power, this technology ensures they won't lose production time due to power problems. The AI agents handle complex decisions about grid management that would take human experts weeks to figure out.

The Reality: Challenges Ahead

But there's an important reality check. Research by IFS and Accenture shows that many manufacturers around the world are not fully using industrial AI yet. The biggest problems are messy data that's scattered across different computer systems, and cybersecurity concerns. When a factory's information is trapped in different departments' separate systems, it takes too long to clean up and prepare the data for AI agents. This delay means factories can't get the benefits of AI as quickly as they'd like. Additionally, factories worry about security risks when they connect AI systems to their operations.

What This Means for the Future

Despite these obstacles, the direction is clear. Agentic AI is moving from being an interesting experiment to becoming essential infrastructure in manufacturing. Companies like IFS are working to make AI agents that understand specific factory problems and can provide solutions that actually improve how factories operate. The goal is to reach what experts call decision velocity, which means making better business decisions faster. Over the next year or two, we should expect to see more manufacturing plants around the world deploying these types of intelligent systems. The factories that successfully solve their data and security challenges first will likely gain major advantages over their competitors.