MANUFACTURING · BUILDING PRODUCTS · BUILDING MATERIALS

AI Automation for Building Materials.

Harmony digitizes paper kiln logbooks and lab sheets, streams zone temps and energy live, flags culls in minutes, and generates COAs from live test data. One AI-native operating system over everything: your floor, your machines, and the software you already run. No rip-and-replace.

Start with a pilot ROI Calculators & Tools

THE PROCESS

First a digital transformation. Then an AI transformation.

FIG. 01 · THE TWO ARCS

ARC 1 · DIGITAL

ARC 2 · AI

Data engineering is the work.AI is what it unlocks.

THE PHASED ROLLOUT

Three phases of a digital and AI transformation.

PHASE 01

PHASE 1

Lay the Data Foundation · Digitization

Every pen-and-paper record digitized at the station, every software system connected, and all of the data unified into one live layer. The digital transformation starts here.

PHASE 02

PHASE 2

Production & Operations Scale

Factory operations turn proactive: live sensors and machine data, the AI scheduling board, predictive maintenance before failure.

PHASE 03

PHASE 3

AI-Native Operations

Agents across the floor and the back office act on the live layer: quality signals, reports, copilots. Humans approve.

AI USE CASES

Eleven ways the AI layer earns its keep.

Index · 10 use cases

U1

Paperwork Digitization

Use case 01 · PEN, PAPER & EXCEL

Problem. Kiln and line logbooks, lab test sheets, cull tallies, shift-handoff whiteboards, and dispatch tickets, keyed into Excel a day later or never read at all.

Harmony AI Solution. Captured where they happen, on tablets at the kiln, the lab, and the dock. Shift handoffs become structured, searchable records instead of a photo of a whiteboard.

U2

Live Machine Data

Use case 02 · LIVE MACHINE DATA

Problem. Line speed lives on the HMI, zone temps in a logbook, kWh and therms on the utility bill. The controllers are decades old, and nobody sees any of it next to cull rates.

Harmony AI Solution. Direct PLC and sensor connections, Allen-Bradley/Rockwell, Siemens, Omron, Mitsubishi, or any other brand, via OPC UA or whatever the machine speaks, decades-old controllers included, streamed in real time next to defect and cull rates from the same hour.

U3

In-Line Quality Intelligence

Use case 03 · IN-LINE QUALITY

Problem. Culls and off-spec are tallied as they exit the line. By the time anyone connects them to a cause, hours of production carry the same flaw.

Harmony AI Solution. Every cull and off-spec unit captured as it exits, with line, hour, and recipe.

U4

AI Search Across All Data

Use case 04 · AI SEARCH

Problem. "Which lots shipped from that batch?" "What did the lab record before the cull spike?" means an ERP export, a historian query nobody remembers how to write, and a walk to the lab.

Harmony AI Solution. Answered in seconds with the source shown, across the ERP, the historian, lab sheets, and dispatch records. Idle floor TVs become live AI line boards.

U5

AI Production Scheduling

Use case 05 · AI SCHEDULING

Problem. Run sequences juggled by hand every morning against silo levels, kiln capacity, recipe changeovers, and the order book.

Harmony AI Solution. AI production scheduling models the planner's own constraints and proposes the sequence. The planner stays in charge and approves.

U6

Yield Optimization

Use case 06 · YIELD OPTIMIZATION

Problem. Yield is computed at month-end from weights nobody trusts. A bad recipe or a drifting line runs for weeks before the number moves.

Harmony AI Solution. Live raw-to-finished yield by line, recipe, and shift. ML clusters culls by cause, so the biggest leak surfaces first instead of hiding in an average.

U7

Energy Intelligence

Use case 07 · ENERGY INTELLIGENCE

Problem. Kilns, furnaces, and compressors dominate the bill, and the bill is the only meter anyone reads. Which setpoint, which idle hour, which line: nobody can say.

Harmony AI Solution. Kilns, furnaces, and compressors metered live.

U8

Inventory + Shortage Intelligence

Use case 08 · INVENTORY

Problem. Silo levels estimated by tapping the side, raw inventory reconciled to the ERP at month-end, shortages discovered when the batch house runs dry.

Harmony AI Solution. Silo and raw-material levels reconciled against the ERP continuously. Drift flagged before it becomes a stopped kiln or an emergency truck.

U9

Back-Office AI Automations

Use case 09 · FULL-SCOPE AI AGENTS · FINANCE, SALES, PROCUREMENT, LOGISTICS

Problem. A customer claim means days of pulling lab sheets and dispatch tickets to reconstruct which lots came from which batch. Certificates of analysis are typed by hand from paper.

Harmony AI Solution. Full-scope AI agents run the workflows across financial, sales, procurement, and logistics: deductions and AR worked automatically, POs parsed from the inbox, and reports written before the morning meeting.

Scope. Financials, sales, procurement, and logistics automations, in the same platform.

U10

Predictive Maintenance

Use case 10 · RESOURCE INTELLIGENCE

Problem. A forming line goes down without warning and the whole plant stops with it. Maintenance history lives in binders and in heads, and preventive maintenance gets skipped when the schedule is tight.

Harmony AI Solution. Forming-line memories with history, criticality, and live status. Vibration and temperature trends schedule service before a line-down event.

01 / 10

YOUR LIKELY STACK

The systems and machines we meet on your floor.

SYSTEMS

SAPOracleInforAVEVA / OSIsoft PI historiansIgnitionExcelCustom appsLocal servers

MACHINES

KilnsFurnacesForming linesBatch housesCustom and OEM lines running decades-old PLCs

You might run any of these. Or none of them. Harmony is software and hardware agnostic, and we connect live machine data from any PLC brand and any software or custom app.

AI AGENTS

Agents that watch, flag, and act. Humans decide.

Cull Pattern Agent

Zone Temp Sentinel

Energy Setpoint Agent

Silo Level Reconciler

COA Generator

Dispatch & Demurrage Agent

Recipe Drift Watch

AR + Collections Copilot

Morning Report Writer

Custom Agents, built for your floor and back office

THE PATTERN WE SEE

The problems we see on every building materials floor, and why they happen.

The historian, ERP, lab, and dispatch never connect

The historian does not talk to the ERP, the lab does not talk to either, and dispatch runs on tickets and Excel.

Kiln logs are written by hand, so data arrives a day late

Kiln and line logbooks, lab test sheets, cull tallies, shift-handoff whiteboards, and dispatch tickets are all written by hand.

Culls are counted at the dry end, hours behind the cause

By the time culls are tallied, the zone temps, speeds, and recipe that caused them sit hours back in three different systems.

Energy is not metered by line

Kilns, furnaces, and compressors are among the largest costs in the plant, but the monthly bill is the only meter anyone reads.

The back office runs on manual work

POs are typed in from emails, invoices keyed into the ERP, deductions and AR worked from spreadsheets, and reports built by hand before the morning meeting.

THE PILOT

$15–20K. 4–6 weeks. One painful problem.

We pick one specific pain point, send engineers to live in your factory for 4–6 weeks, and solve it. One-time payment, working software by week 3, and no obligation to go further. If you do, you choose the modules that you like.

FIRST CALLSECOND CALLCHOOSE PILOTDATA ACCESS FROM ITON-SITEBUILDTESTROIREVIEW

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QUESTIONS, ANSWERED

Our lines are custom-built and the PLCs are decades old. Can you still get live data?

Yes. Direct PLC and sensor connections, Allen-Bradley/Rockwell, Siemens, Omron, Mitsubishi, or any other brand, via OPC UA or whatever the machine speaks. Where a controller predates modern protocols, we add sensors and meters alongside it, at cost. Software and hardware agnostic.

We already run a PI historian. Do you replace it?

No. The historian keeps collecting. The AI layer sits on top and joins it to the ERP, lab sheets, and dispatch records, so a tag stream becomes an answer: natural-language AI search, ML on live data, signals sent to the floor. Data engineering is the work. AI is what it unlocks.

Do you replace our ERP?

Additive by default. The AI layer sits on top of what you already run, and when a system deserves to be replaced, we replace it. Sometimes we're the layer on top of your MES. Sometimes we are the MES: station capture, live line boards, quality, genealogy, and scheduling on one AI-native layer.

How does the AI get our data?

Read-only connections, scheduled exports, or on-prem. Security is reviewed together in scoping. Read-only pilots: every agent proposes, a person approves.

Do you work remotely?

No. We always start a pilot in person and on-site, with forward-deployed engineers on your floor. Very rarely do we do anything remotely.

What does it cost after the pilot?

A per-plant annual platform: unlimited seats, no user fees, hardware at cost. The pilot itself is $15-20K over 4-6 weeks against one painful problem, with working software by week 3.

Harmony AI catches drift within minutes on a continuous line, so off-spec production stops while the shift can still fix it.

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ADJACENT FLOORS WE RUN

Building Products →Cabinetry, Furniture & Millwork →Windows, Doors & Hardware →Plastics & Rubber →