What is hybrid AI for manufacturing?
Hybrid AI uses different models for different tasks. In Aktuara, anything involving process recipes, engineering designs, sensor telemetry or quality data stays on private, open-source models in your own cloud or at your plant edge, with small models answering first and larger models when needed. Tasks with no confidential data, such as market research, supplier news or tracking public regulation, can use managed models such as Claude, GPT or Grok.
Why not private AI for everything, or a managed tool for everything?
Private-only means your teams miss out on the most capable models for public research. Managed-only sends process and design data to a vendor and bills every alarm, image and document by the token. Hybrid gives each task the right model: confidentiality where it matters, frontier capability where it helps, and the lower cost for each workload.
Can confidential data ever reach a managed model?
No. Every request passes a policy check before any model sees it. Anything involving process, design, telemetry, quality or customer data, or where the check is unsure, stays private. You decide which task types may use managed AI at all, and you can switch it off entirely.
Does Aktuara replace our MES, ERP, historian or maintenance system?
No. Aktuara works on top of the systems you already run. Your MES, ERP, historian, IoT platform, maintenance system and PLM stay the systems of record; Aktuara reads from them and helps your teams analyse, summarise and draft, grounded in your own SOPs.
Does Aktuara control machines or make decisions automatically?
No. Aktuara is decision support with human oversight. Machine data is connected read-only, nothing is written to PLCs, robots or lines, and a qualified person reviews every output and makes the decision. Your organisation defines the intended use of each workflow.
Can Aktuara connect to our IoT platform, PLCs and sensors?
Yes, read-only. Aktuara connects to machine and sensor data through standard interfaces such as OPC UA and MQTT, your historian or your existing IoT platform, and processes it in your cloud or on GPU servers at the plant edge. Nothing is ever written back to PLCs, robots or devices, and IoT data never reaches a managed model.
Does Aktuara use facial recognition or monitor individual workers?
No. Aktuara’s camera vision detects events such as defects, blocked aisles, robot cell stops and zone entries, not identities. There is no facial recognition and no scoring of individual workers; faces can be blurred at the source, and video is processed only on private models in your own infrastructure. We provide documentation for your data-protection impact assessment and works council.
What is sovereign AI for manufacturing?
In Aktuara, sovereign or private AI is the part that handles confidential data. The models run inside your own cloud account, data centre or plant-edge servers, under your control, instead of on a vendor’s servers. Aktuara delivers it as an operated platform, so manufacturers get the benefits without building an AI team.
How is Aktuara different from building manufacturing AI ourselves?
Running AI on confidential plant data is far more than provisioning a server with a GPU. It needs infrastructure provisioning as code, model serving, retrieval over your own SOPs, connectors to plant systems, staging environments, release engineering with evaluation gates and rollback, observability, autoscaling, backup and security policy, all kept running every day. Aktuara delivers that complete stack, built on XePlatform, inside your own infrastructure and operated for you, so a supervised pilot can start within weeks without new hires.
How does Aktuara support ISO 9001, IATF 16949, IEC 62443, NIS2 and the EU AI Act?
Aktuara is designed to support quality management expectations such as ISO 9001 and IATF 16949, industrial security practices such as IEC 62443, and obligations under NIS2, the EU AI Act, the EU Data Act, GDPR and export-control rules for technical data. Confidential data is processed only inside your own infrastructure, every request and approval is logged, and we provide documentation for your risk assessments and audits. Compliance itself depends on how your organisation uses the platform.
Which AI models does Aktuara use?
Open-source general, vision and time-series models run inside your infrastructure for all confidential work, alongside your own engineering models. New models are adopted only after they pass evaluation on your own data. Managed models such as Claude, GPT or Grok are used only for tasks with no confidential data.
Can Aktuara run on-premise or at the plant edge?
Yes. Aktuara runs on the major public clouds in the region you choose, in Europe or North America, in your private cloud or data centre, or on GPU servers at the plant edge, built on open standards so you can move without rebuilding.
How much does hybrid AI for manufacturing cost?
A fixed platform subscription plus your own infrastructure costs, with no per-token fees for confidential work. Managed AI is billed per token only for the tasks you route to it, under a monthly cap. Small models first, capacity that follows your shifts and batch runs, and shared hardware keep the cost of each answer low, which matters when sensor and image volumes run around the clock.
How long does a pilot take?
The environment is set up in hours and your SOPs loaded within days. A supervised pilot with your engineers typically runs about four weeks, while your IT, OT security and quality teams complete their review in parallel.
