IFS launches IFS Intelligence, Industrial AI Harness, eyes industrial productivity

IFS, an industrial AI software company, launched IFS Intelligence, which brings context about assets, work orders, schedules, processes and history to the manufacturing and physical operations systems.

The company, which made the announcement at its Unleashed 2026 conference in Orlando, said IFS Intelligence can work from live data across its IFS and third-party systems. IFS Intelligence will collate data across operations and act with governance and business rules set by the enterprise.

IFS is looking to bring context across multiple disparate systems in industrial settings whether it be people in the field, plant floor, rig, manufacturing center or office and provide insights in one conversational interface.

Mark Moffat, CEO of IFS, said: "We often see industrial organizations operating at around 60% of their potential. The missing 40% is already inside the business. It sits in the expertise of the control room, the knowledge of the night shift, and the data spread across every system."

"Anyone can generate ChatGPT type answers. The really hard part is putting that into the hands of the people doing the work and acting on it safely inside a live operation," said Moffat, speaking during his keynote.

IFS Intelligence aims to close that performance gap, said Moffett. IFS Intelligence is available on all supported versions of IFS Cloud. It is offered as a universal enterprise-wide license.

• IFS acquires Softeon to expand into warehouse management
• IFS teams up with Anthropic, Siemens, Boston Dynamics, 1X, showcases industrial AI use cases
• Constellation ShortList™ Product-Centric Cloud ERP
• Constellation ShortList™ Quality Management System Platforms

To complement IFS Intelligence, the company also outlined its Industrial AI Harness that is designed to pull together context about inventory, production capacity, supply chain commitments, logistics and financial impacts and automatically surface risks. IFS Intelligence is powered by the Industrial AI Harness.

Components in IFS' Industrial AI Harness include:

• Planning and orchestration to coordinate agents and tools.
• Skills and connectors to define and validate the systems agents can use.
• Memory and context on information relevant to tasks.
• Guardrails and permissions.
• Verification and escalation to check work for compliance and correctness.
• Observability and auditability logs.

Here's how it all fits together.

The Industrial AI Harness works across all AI models and services and keeps data within the system of record and works up to autonomy with governance at each step.

Separately, IFS's Softeon unit launched Fulfillment Flow, which embeds intelligence throughout warehouse operations. Fulfillment Flow is a set of digital workers and AI agents designed for wave management, labor, automation and inventory and replenishment with humans in the loop.

More industrial AI:

• Caterpillar’s AI Autonomy Efforts Accelerate, But Domain Knowledge Drives Returns
• Schneider Electric buys PTC for $22.6 billion as it eyes industrial AI, energy data flywheel
• Veltris CEO Chandrana on vertical AI, industrial AI use cases

Industrial AI: Big opportunity, volatility

Speaking at Unleashed 2026, Moffat said IFS Intelligence is a release that reflect "what we were doing with you over the past 12 months."

He added that physical industries represent a big opportunity for AI.

"You represent the industries that are both benefiting from and fueling an economic explosion. This is a generational opportunity to be part of the next industrial revolution, the biggest that they'll ever have been, all powered by technology and new intelligence," said Moffat. "They're talking about tech and Silicon Valley and everything that goes with it. But the vast majority of the beneficiaries of that economic explosion are the people in this room, the producing industries."

That said, Moffat noted the environment is volatile. "There's a jeopardy to this as much as there's a massive opportunity. Everything has changed," he added.

Industrial companies are facing high commodity costs, a brain drain of technicians and knowledge and energy constraints. Industrial AI will have to close some of those gaps. "The shortages are real. Industrial AI has to be about getting some of that potential, getting your technicians to be more productive, getting some of those aircraft back up in the air, giving your people in the front line superpowers, getting more out of them, giving them an enriched job experience," said Moffat.

He added:

"The 500 largest companies in the world estimate $1.4 trillion of unplanned downtime. So everywhere you look, there's just opportunity. The average worker, based on the work that we've done, spends about a third of their time with an actual tool in their hand. The rest is spent waiting, searching, or filling in forms."