Schneider Electric, Nvidia and HPE have formed a strategic collaboration to introduce AI agents that can monitor and help optimize industrial operations from inside factories and process plants.
The companies describe the technology as a route to “physical AI” for industries such as energy, chemicals, pulp and paper, where AI is more likely to interact with existing control systems and industrial equipment than take the form of a robot.
Their first Industrial AI Agents at the Edge will focus on monitoring operational technology (OT), cybersecurity and energy consumption.
The agents run locally using HPE Private Cloud AI, rather than requiring sensitive industrial data to be continually transferred to a public cloud. Schneider Electric says this can help manufacturers address concerns around data security, cybersecurity and the cost of running AI applications.
Gwenaelle Huet, executive vice president, industrial automation at Schneider Electric, says: “The next generation of industrial innovation will be driven by intelligence embedded directly into industrial operations.
“While much of today’s focus is on autonomous machines, we see a significant opportunity to apply Physical AI to the industrial systems that power the world’s critical industries.
“Together with Nvidia and HPE, we are bringing together expertise in automation, AI and edge computing to help customers transform operational data into action, improving resilience, efficiency, cybersecurity and sustainability while laying the foundation for more autonomous industrial operations.”
The OT monitoring agents will analyze information including equipment configurations, alarms, maintenance histories and real-time operational data to identify emerging problems and recommend corrective action.
Cybersecurity agents will analyze network activity, equipment configurations and operational events for abnormal behavior, while energy optimization agents will examine production and energy data to identify opportunities to reduce energy consumption.
Schneider Electric says customers will be able to manage the agents through its EcoStruxure Industrial Insights applications.
The underlying monitoring technology is already being used by Chilean pulp, paper and packaging producer CMPC, which has used Schneider Electric’s OT Monitoring System for three years.
Matías Jory, digital and process manager at CMPC, says: “For the past three years, OTMS has helped us improve visibility into the health and availability of our control systems. In continuous industrial operations, identifying issues early is critical to protecting production and avoiding costly disruption.
“Looking ahead, we see significant potential for AI Agents to build on this proven foundation, helping our specialists investigate issues faster and move more effectively from insight to action, while keeping people in control of critical decisions.”
The companies say the longer-term aim is to enable industrial AI systems to continuously monitor operations, identify problems and recommend or make adjustments while checking whether those actions produced the intended result.
