Rockwell Automation and Augury announced a partnership to combine the companies' AI workflows and portfolios to prioritize agentic AI, designed to help manufacturers improve reliability, maintenance and industrial performance.

The partnership combines Augury's Industrial AI Workforce with Rockwell Automation's AI infused portfolio including Fiix computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) and FactoryTalk Optix. The companies aim to help manufacturers move from early issue detection and diagnosis to maintenance planning, execution and continuous improvement through a connected workflow.

Following this announcement, experts from Rockwell and Augury answered questions from Automation World about agentic AI and how the partnership can help advance AI for manufacturers. 

Responses below are attributed to Sunil Koticha, director of automation-asset management at Rockwell Automation:

Automation World: How do you turn machine data into action through agentic AI? 

Sunil Koticha: Machine data only creates value when an insight becomes a decision and then a task someone actually completes. Through our partnership with Augury, AI continuously interprets machine-health data, identifies a developing issue, and automatically turns it into a prioritized work order inside Fiix CMMS, so the finding lands in the maintenance team's workflow. When the work is done, the result flows back to the AI so the next recommendation is sharper. That closed loop—data to insight to action to result—is how machine data becomes action. 

AW: What industrial actions are we talking about? 

SK: Maintenance and reliability actions on physical assets: automatically creating and prioritizing a work order to inspect or repair a motor, pump, or gearbox that's showing early signs of trouble, and routing it to the right technician with the diagnosis attached. The aim is to move teams from reacting to breakdowns to preventing them, scheduling the fix before the failure, and keeping critical equipment running. 

AW: How are you defining agentic AI in this capacity? 

SK: Agentic AI here is AI that doesn't just observe and alert—it reasons about what's happening and initiates the next step, with a human in the loop. Instead of handing an operator another dashboard, Augury's Industrial AI interprets the situation, prescribes the action, and drives it into the maintenance system as work to be done. It helps reliability teams move from identifying issues to taking the next appropriate action. 

AW: Describe that leap from insights to actions. Why is this challenging? What's the fix? 

SK: The honest answer is that the hard part isn't detecting a problem—it's changing behavior. Maintenance teams already have a lot on their plate, and "if it's not broken, don't fix it" is a genuinely comfortable place to operate from. On top of that, insights and execution usually live in two different systems, so even when a finding is right, it gets re-keyed, delayed, or lost on the way to the technician. 

The fix works on both fronts. Technically, it's a two-way, closed-loop integration: the insight becomes a prioritized work order in Fiix automatically, the technician executes in the tool they already use, and the outcome flows back to sharpen the next prediction—no re-keying, no dropped handoffs. But the more important part is trust. We start on critical assets, work alongside the people who run them, and let the results build confidence in the system and the process. Think about the technician who can walk past a machine and just know it isn't running right—that's a skill built over years in a facility. What we're really trying to do is mimic and scale that instinct, so every team is spending its time on the most impactful work. 

AW: Describe how this partnership works and how it benefits clients. 

SK: Rockwell Automation and Augury have partnered to combine Augury's Industrial AI and machine health capabilities with Rockwell's Fiix CMMS, delivered together as Fiix Asset Health by Augury. This partnership builds on Rockwell's established capabilities in industrial automation, asset management, AI-enabled 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 identify emerging equipment issues earlier, prioritize maintenance actions, and execute work within the same system used to manage maintenance operations. Together with Rockwell's broader portfolio of connected products, software, operational intelligence, and reliability expertise, the solution helps organizations improve 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. 

AW: What most excites you about this development? 

SK: What excites me most is that it finally connects knowing and doing. The industry has had no shortage of data and alerts, but the value was stuck at the insight stage; bringing agentic AI together with the maintenance 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 I'm most excited about is the impact on people. I want to see how this changes a maintenance person's day to day—how an early insight can cut down the overtime someone has to work, so they get more time away from the factory. And how moving to proactive maintenance can build a culture of maintenance and operations working together, rather than maintenance against operations. 

Responses below are attributed to various SMEs at Augury: 

AW: How do you turn machine data into action through agentic AI? 

Elan Greenberg, CEO of Augury: Manufacturers have spent years investing in sensors, automation, and enterprise software. They have the data. 

The problem is that data sits across disconnected systems. The reliability, maintenance, and operations teams that need it can spend hours or days finding it, making sense of it, and figuring out what to do next. 

We built the Industrial AI Workforce to close that gap. It brings together machine and process intelligence with operational context, so frontline teams can understand what matters and act on it faster. 

That's the 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's closing the gap between detection and action. 

AW: What industrial actions are we talking about? 

Anoop Mohan, chief product and technology officer at Augury: Think about a reliability engineer who identifies a machine fault. Knowing the fault exists is only the first step. What is the root cause? How severe is it? What corrective action should be taken? When should the work happen? How does it get into the maintenance workflow? 

This is where the combination of Augury with Rockwell becomes powerful. By connecting our Reliability Agent with Rockwell's Fiix MAX, we can bring that intelligence into the maintenance tools teams already use and make it easier for them to move faster between understanding an issue and executing the right action. 

And this goes beyond maintenance. By pairing Rockwell's FactoryTalk Optix with our complete Industrial AI Workforce, teams will be able to real-time connect machine performance data and production data and apply that context to everyday operational decisions, from capacity improvements to energy efficiency. 

AW: How are you defining agentic AI in this capacity? 

AM: For industrial AI, an agent needs more than an LLM. It needs the right data, the right context, and a cognitive layer that can reason across both. That's how we think about the agentic stack. 

Augury brings deep machine and process intelligence. Through partners like AVEVA and Rockwell’s FactoryTalk Optix, we can bring in broader operational data. Our Industrial Context Graph creates the context across those sources. And we're working with Google to bring best-in-class models into the cognitive layer that powers the next generation of industrial AI agents. 

Put those layers together and you can build agents around specific manufacturing personas and workflows, from reliability and maintenance to operations. 

AW: Describe that leap from insights to actions. Why is this challenging? What's the fix? 

AM: The best industrial AI doesn't ask teams to change how they work. It meets them where they already are. 

That's important because the gap between an insight and an action is usually a workflow problem. You might know that a machine has a developing fault, but the information needed to decide what to do next can sit across machine data, production systems, maintenance systems, and different teams. 

The answer is not another standalone AI tool. You need to connect data and reasoning into the systems where the work happens. That's what makes this partnership with Rockwell important. We're connecting the Industrial AI Workforce with tools manufacturers already use, so teams can be empowered and move faster. 

AW: Describe how this partnership works and how it benefits clients. 

EG: Rockwell is the global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation. Their technology is already at the center of how manufacturers operate. 

Augury brings the Industrial AI Workforce, backed by years of predictive maintenance and process optimization expertise. For customers, the goal is simple: spend less time chasing information, move from insight to action faster, and improve reliability, maintenance and operating performance. 

This is about making the investments manufacturers have already made work harder for the people on the frontline. 

AW: What most excites you about this development? 

EG: Empowering a global workforce. Manufacturing is facing a massive knowledge and labor challenge as plants become more complex. The answer isn't replacing the people who run them. It's amplifying them. 

That's why we built the Industrial AI Workforce. To empower frontline teams with the agentic solutions they need to win. Rockwell gives us the opportunity to deploy these solutions into the systems manufacturers already depend on and reach customers globally. 

AI that enables the plant worker and tradesman. That's the future we're building.