Ultimo adds AI digital workers for maintenance teams

Ultimo has added three digital workers for planning, maintenance and safety to its Intelligent Asset Management platform, targeting industrial maintenance teams.

The new tools cover maintenance planning, technician support, and health, safety and environment work. They are available through Microsoft Teams and the Ultimo platform. The launch extends an earlier digital worker for HSE incident reporting, allowing planners, technicians and safety managers to use the system in daily workflows.

Owned by IFS, Ultimo said the software was built around the data structures and processes used in enterprise asset management and maintenance operations. The digital workers are designed to handle routine, lower-risk actions independently while escalating higher-risk decisions to staff. Telemetry is intended to give users visibility into what the system is doing.

The move reflects a wider push by industrial software suppliers to apply artificial intelligence to maintenance operations, as companies face staffing shortages, ageing workforces and rising volumes of operational data. Ultimo said its maintenance trend research found that 63% of industrial organisations are struggling with an ageing workforce.

Early customer Berkvens Doorsystems said the software had already reduced the time team leaders spend on daily preparation work. The manufacturer added that it had helped staff combine data from multiple sources to identify priorities and recurring maintenance issues.

"With AI, all relevant information is automatically summarized and combined, saving each team lead 30-60 minutes daily during the start of the day and matching our own analysis by more than 95%," said Stefan van Bussel, Teamlead Technical Services, Berkvens Doorsystems.

A second Berkvens executive described the broader operational impact.

"By intelligently combining data from different sources, new insights emerge, enabling teams to set better priorities, identify structural issues, and carry out more targeted maintenance and improvements," said Wijnen.

Workflow focus

The latest launch builds on Ultimo's effort to embed AI directly into the day-to-day work of maintenance teams rather than position it as a separate analytics layer. In practice, that means using the software for tasks such as work preparation, reporting and safety processes within systems and communication tools workers already use.

That matters in sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, healthcare and utilities, where maintenance teams often work across large asset bases and face pressure to keep equipment available while meeting safety and compliance requirements. Ultimo said more than 150,000 technicians use its software to manage more than 22 million assets across over 2,500 customers worldwide.

In safety, the HSE-focused digital worker is intended to support incident reporting and routine compliance tasks within normal workflows. In maintenance planning and technician support, the software is intended to reduce time spent on repetitive administrative work and data gathering before staff make decisions or carry out repairs.

Market push

Ultimo Chief Executive Officer Steven Elsham said the company sees the software as part of a broader shift in how industrial assets are managed.

"The companies pulling ahead aren't maintaining assets better, they're rethinking what's possible when AI is built into the core of how enterprise assets are managed," said Steven Elsham, Chief Executive Officer, Ultimo.

He added that the company was expanding a platform already in live industrial use.

"Ultimo was the first EAM vendor to bring agentic AI to industrial maintenance, and these three digital workers build on that foundation. Every core role in a maintenance organization now has intelligence embedded in its workflow," said Elsham.

Ultimo said its agent-based offering can work with both enterprise asset management and computerised maintenance management systems, rather than only within its own software stack. That could widen its appeal for industrial groups using a mix of systems across sites or business units.

For maintenance teams, the commercial case is likely to depend on whether the software can cut time spent on coordination and routine analysis without creating new oversight burdens. Berkvens' reported saving of 30 to 60 minutes a day for each team lead offers an early indication of where vendors believe the return will come from.

Ultimo said the digital workers are intended to remain under human control, with autonomous actions limited to non-disruptive work and intervention required for higher-risk decisions.