Is this fact complete?
Late events, sensor-dark windows and local workarounds leave holes no query can see.
Industrial Agent Infrastructure
The agents are ready. The factory floor is not.
AI agents can already reason about production. But no plant lets an agent act on data it cannot defend. Quorum Labs builds the operating layer industrial agents need - evidence, provenance, time-effective operational context and explicit authority boundaries.
EvidenceProvenanceTime-effective contextAuthority boundaries
QUALITY HEADHow far does the torque issue on Line 3 reach?
SITUATIONSuspect lot L-4471 · torque out of window · detected 06:14
Evidence · with provenance
E-102Torque curve, station 12 - 06:02–06:14MACHINE
E-103Changed the bit on 12 before the shift - A. VermaOPERATOR
E-104Calibration certificate C-88 - valid at event timeSYSTEM
E-105Scan gap: 41 units unscanned, 05:47–06:02GAP
Agent answer · cited
Contain 214 units across lots L-4471 and L-4472 [E-102] [E-104], including 41 units held for the scan gap [E-105]. Genealogy is complete for 173 of 214 units.
Awaiting approval - Head of Quality
FIG. 1 - Ask the floor a question in plain language. The agent answers with cited evidence, flags the gaps and stops at the authority boundary.
The Problem
Factory data is not operational truth.
An agent can query MES, QMS, ERP and the spreadsheets between them. Four things it still cannot know:
Where did it come from?
Measured by a machine, asserted by an operator, copied later or inferred? Provenance is usually lost.
What governed it then?
Which revision, calibration state or work instruction applied when the event happened?
What may it do next?
Even a correct recommendation needs permission, confirmation and an audit trail before action.
Access to data does not make a factory agent-ready.
The Operating Loop
From event to action. Governed end to end.
FIGURE 2 - THE INDUSTRIAL AGENT OPERATING LOOP
Every governed action becomes new evidence
The Foundation
Quorum Substrate. Governed industrial memory.
Your systems stay exactly where they are. Substrate sits beneath and across them, combining source-level evidence from the machine and operator boundary with records from existing systems, while preserving provenance and time-effective context.
Industrial agentscontainment · reconciliation · quality evidence · audit · maintenance
Agent governanceidentity · permissions · confirmation · authority boundaries
Quorum Substrategoverned evidence · operational context · provenance · situations
Your existing systemsmachines · operators · PLCs · MES · QMS · ERP · suppliers - kept in place
Nothing is ripped out. Substrate gives agents a governed foundation across what the plant already runs.
The Agents
Start with the wound. Contain it with evidence.
First Agent · Containment
The most expensive question in manufacturing: how far does this defect reach?
A suspect lot is found. Today, defining the containment scope means days of engineers reconciling MES, QMS and spreadsheets - and a scope you still cannot fully defend to a customer or auditor. Containment delivers a cited, auditable package in hours, with every gap flagged and human approval built in.
See Containment →- 01Detect the suspect scope.
- 02Compose the affected-unit set from governed evidence.
- 03Flag missing evidence and disagreements.
- 04Propose a cited package for human approval.
ContainmentReconcileQuality EvidenceAuditMaintenance
One substrate, many industrial workers. Every agent deepens the same governed memory.
The Principle
Agents climb. One rung at a time.
Authority expands only with accumulated evidence and explicit customer approval. The boundary is deterministic: an agent cannot act above its rung.
Independent Research
The thesis came before the product.
We were publishing on why bolted-on enterprise AI fails before we built the answer. Our research library is the provenance of this company.
Walk through a real containment scenario.
See how an agent answers from cited evidence, exposes the gaps and stops at the approval gate.