🚀 Agent AI: Q&A with Rockwell Automation and Augury Experts!

[Ahmet Ö.]

Rockwell Automation and Augury announced a partnership combining their AI workflows and portfolios to prioritize agent artificial intelligence (AI) designed to help manufacturers improve reliability, maintenance, and industrial performance.

🤝 The Power of Partnership​

This partnership combines Augury's Industrial AI Workforce with Rockwell Automation's AI-powered portfolio, including the Fiix computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) and FactoryTalk Optix. The goal is to help manufacturers progress through a connected workflow, from early issue detection and diagnosis to maintenance planning, execution, and continuous improvement.

🗣️ Expert Insights: Sunil Koticha (Rockwell Automation)​

❓ How do you turn machine data into action through agent AI?

Machine data creates value when an insight turns into a decision, and then a task is completed. Through our partnership with Augury, AI continuously interprets machine health data, identifies an evolving issue, and automatically converts it into a prioritized work order within Fiix CMMS. When the work is completed, the outcome feeds back into the AI, so the next recommendation is sharper. This closed loop – from data to insight to action to outcome – demonstrates how machine data is turned into action.

❓ What industrial actions are we talking about?

Maintenance and reliability actions on physical assets: automatically creating and prioritizing a work order to inspect or repair a motor, pump, or gearbox showing signs of trouble, and routing it to the right technician with the diagnosis. The goal is to move teams from reacting to failures to preventing them, planning repairs before breakdown, and keeping critical equipment running.

❓ How do you define agent AI in this capacity?

Agent AI here is AI that doesn’t just observe and alert, but reasons about what’s happening and initiates the next step, with a human in the loop. Instead of giving an operator another dashboard, Augury’s Industrial AI interprets the situation, prescribes the action, and routes it as work to the maintenance system. It helps reliability teams move from identifying issues to taking the next appropriate action.

❓ Describe the transition from insights to actions. Why is this challenging? What is the solution?

The honest answer is the hard part isn’t detecting a problem, it’s changing behavior. Maintenance teams already have too much to do, and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a really comfortable place to operate. On top of that, insights and execution often live in two different systems, so even if a finding is correct, it gets re-entered, delayed, or lost on its way to the technician.

The solution works on both fronts. Technically, it’s a two-way, closed-loop integration: the insight automatically becomes a prioritized work order in Fiix, the technician executes in the tool they already use, and the outcome feeds back to sharpen the next prediction – no re-entry, no hand-offs. But the more important part is trust. We start with critical assets, work with the people who run them, and let the results build confidence in the system and the process. Think of the technician who walks past a machine and knows it’s not running right – that’s a skill built over years in a plant. What we’re really trying to do is emulate and scale that intuition so every team spends its time on the most impactful work.

❓ How does this partnership work and benefit customers?

Rockwell Automation and Augury have partnered to combine Augury’s Industrial AI and machine health capabilities with Rockwell’s Fiix CMMS, offered together as Fiix Asset Health by Augury. This partnership leverages Rockwell’s deep-rooted capabilities in industrial automation, asset management, AI-powered software, sensing technologies, and reliability services to create a more connected approach to asset performance.

By bringing Augury’s machine health insights into Fiix, customers can detect emerging equipment issues earlier, prioritize maintenance actions, and execute work within the same system used to manage maintenance operations. Combined with Rockwell’s broader portfolio of connected products, software, operational intelligence, and reliability expertise, the solution helps organizations increase asset availability, reduce unplanned downtime, extend equipment life, and optimize maintenance resources. Ultimately, customers gain a more complete foundation for improving industrial performance across their operations.

❓ What excites you most about this development?

What excites me most is that it finally makes the connection between knowing and doing. Industry hasn’t been short on data and alerts, but the value has been stuck at the insight stage; bringing agent AI together with the system of record turns that insight into action at scale and helps teams get ahead of failures instead of chasing them. It’s a real step change in how reliability and maintenance work together.

But what excites me most is the impact on people. I want to see how this changes the daily life of a maintainer – how an early insight can reduce the overtime someone has to work so they can spend more time away from the plant. And how moving to proactive maintenance can build a culture where maintenance and operations work together, not against each other.

🗣️ Expert Insights: Elan Greenberg (Augury CEO)​

❓ How do you turn machine data into action through agent AI?

Manufacturers have invested in sensors, automation, and enterprise software for years. They have the data. The problem is, the data sits in disconnected systems. The reliability, maintenance, and operations teams who need it can spend hours or days trying to find it, make sense of it, and then figure out what to do. We built the Industrial AI Workforce to bridge that gap. It brings machine and process intelligence together with operational context so frontline teams can understand what matters and act faster. This is a shift. From more data and more alerts, to AI agents that tell teams what to fix, why it matters, and what to do next. It closes the gap between detection and action.

🗣️ Expert Insights: Anoop Mohan (Augury Chief Product and Technology Officer)​

❓ What industrial actions are we talking about?

Consider a reliability engineer who detects a machine fault. Knowing that the fault exists is only the first step. What is the root cause? How serious is it? What corrective action should be taken? When should the work be done? How does it get into the maintenance workflow? This is where Augury’s combination with Rockwell becomes powerful. By connecting our Reliability Agent with Rockwell’s Fiix MAX, we can bring this intelligence into the maintenance tools that teams already use, making it easier for them to move faster between understanding a problem and executing the right action. And this goes beyond just maintenance. By pairing Rockwell’s FactoryTalk Optix with our complete Industrial AI Workforce, teams will be able to connect machine performance data and production data in real-time.