Where humans and AI don't just analyze systems, they build them together — and it's the future of how things get made.
Not with robot overlords, but with engineers and operators building better products, faster and more efficiently with the help of AI.
AI is everywhere, and it’s increasingly powerful. But in manufacturing, the term often means different things to different people.
Here’s a quick primer to understand those differences, and what they mean for the future of manufacturing and industrial engineering with AI.
And it's been around for a long time. It includes everything from decision trees and Machine Learning (ML) models to deep learning and the powerful Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Gemini that are quickly becoming a part of our everyday lives.
Most Industrial AI today actually isn't an LLM. Instead, it’s a purpose-built ML model trained on a specific dataset to solve a targeted problem. These models are very powerful and useful, but narrow in scope.
LLMs are trained on massive public datasets to unlock general intelligence. They can reason, write, code, and take agentic action to collaborate — and they keep getting better. Frontier labs like Anthropic, DeepMind, Meta AI, OpenAI, and xAI are at the forefront of this progress. Multimodal LLMs can even understand and generate images, video, and audio.
When people talk about and hype AI today, they're usually talking about these models.
While there is a lot of futuristic talk of superintelligence automating everything, for now, it’s pretty clear that LLMs are most impactful when working with us — not just for us.
Software engineers already do this in IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) where humans and AI build together in a shared digital space. This approach accelerates output and problem-solving while humans remain in control, and is transforming how knowledge work happens.
Manufacturing needs the same.
At Threaded, we’re opening up this capability, and agentic, collaborative work instructions are just the first step in how future factories will be designed, operated, scaled, and improved.
AI won't just analyze data for one-off optimizations, but will act as a collaborator in the same digital space as engineers and operators. Humans define intent and direction, and AI helps design, simulate, and execute to accelerate the entire cycle of manufacturing launch and continuous improvement.
We call this Agentic Industrial Engineering, and whether you're reshoring production, launching a physical product, or driving continuous improvement, it's how the next generation of manufacturers will build, scale, adapt, and improve real-world manufacturing.
We're excited to be at the forefront of making this a reality, and would love for you to try it out to experience this new way of operating. See how it can help, and let us know what else you'd like to see, because continuous improvement is after all the name of the game.
