The maintenance and reliability sector has a knowledge problem more than a technology problem. As experienced engineers retire, they take decades of tacit know-how with them - the sound a failing bearing makes, the fault pattern that never shows up in a manual. No software licence replaces that overnight, and the industry doesn't have years to work out how to capture it.
That's why AI in enterprise asset management (EAM) needs to mean something more specific than a chatbot bolted onto existing software. The real opportunity is what Ultimo calls digital workers: AI agents built to absorb and apply an organisation's own operational history - not a generic model trained on the internet, but one that learns from a site's actual failure modes, work orders and technician judgement calls. That's the difference between AI as a feature and AI as a way of institutionalising expertise before it walks out the door.
Ultimo has been investing heavily here, with digital agents already supporting environment, health and safety management, maintenance planning and maintenance technician roles - with more in development. The goal isn't to replace engineers; it's to make their knowledge an asset the organisation keeps, rather than one person's memory.
This is exactly the conversation Ultimo will be having at the Mainstream UK Summit in Birmingham this October. Ultimo is an Interaction Partner at the event and will be joined on stage by customer Forth Ports, bringing a practitioner's perspective to the discussion of what this shift means for the sector.
For teams grappling with an ageing workforce and a widening skills gap, this is worth seeing first-hand. Visit the Ultimo stand or catch the Forth Ports session on 20–21 October to find out what "system of intelligence" actually looks like on the plant floor.
Author
Berend Booms, Head of Enterprise Asset Management Insights at Ultimo
