Artificial intelligence has garnered a burst of headlines in 2025, but according to the supply chain software vendor IFS, commercial generative AI products fall far short of delivering practical results in real-life applications such as factories, supply chains, and plants.
Instead, Linköping, Sweden-based IFS says its brand of “industrial AI” can deliver the business knowledge and sector-specific context required to move AI out of the back office and into critical uses like enabling manufacturing, utility, and field repair operations.
That approach can enable industrial AI to move beyond basic demonstrations and marketing into practical applications IRL—a texting acronym for “in real life”—IFS CEO Mark Moffat said in keynote remarks at the company’s conference held today in New York City.
“The opportunity to drive growth in our economy, as well as positively impact our society and planet using AI is now – but importantly, what will make a difference is applying AI in the industrial setting,” Moffat said in a release. “The news headlines to date have been on the generic productivity benefits AI can provide to office-based workers, but IFS is uniquely positioned to deliver contextual and industry-specific AI to workers in the field. And that is where we will see the most impactful innovation and efficiency gains.”
According to Moffat, examples of specific applications of industrial AI in the transportation sector include: logistics network validation, shipment simulation and revenue discovery, and port equipment failure detection. And manufacturing use cases include: critical asset anomaly detection, dynamic production planning and scheduling, and enhanced supply chain agility.
And outside of logistics and transportation, the technology can many additional uses in telecommunications (first time fix prediction and enhancement, cell tower structural health prediction, and automated fault detection and triage), construction and engineering (certification delay prediction, project margin forecasting and simulation), energy utilities and resources (autonomous inspections, disaster simulation and response, and crew readiness and optimized dispatch), and aerospace and defense (dynamic line maintenance scheduling and assisted troubleshooting and repair).
Additional support for IFS’ approach came from speaker Mohamed Kande, global chairman of consulting firm PWC. Kande said that 12 months ago, most AI adoption conversations focused on applying the technology for back-office functions such as finance, human resources, or information technology. But today, future uses will move beyond merely making existing tasks more efficient, and proceed to transforming workflows into new patterns.
In Kande’s words, the ultimate function of AI is “not to remove the worker in the field, but to augment them to do their job very differently.”
