The only person who knows how to fix it retired last spring.
Every manufacturer has a version of this night. The machine that only Dave understood. The workaround living in a binder nobody can find. The ERP that can't talk to the MES.
Sphere builds AI that puts thirty years of plant knowledge, every sensor, every system, and every SOP one question away from the person who needs it at 2:47 AM.
21 years · 300+ clients in 28 countries · NPS 75 · AWS Premier Partner · Anthropic Partner
Manufacturing is losing its memory faster than it's losing its machines.
What an hour of unplanned downtime can cost a mid-size plant, before late orders, expedited freight, overtime, penalties, and scrapped WIP compound it.
Manufacturing jobs projected to go unfilled by 2030 as experienced operators and maintenance engineers retire with undocumented knowledge.
Of plant data never gets used for decisions because it is trapped in ERP, MES, SCADA, quality logs, and paper travelers that don't talk to each other.
The plants that win the next decade won't be the ones with the newest robots. They'll be the ones whose knowledge, data, and systems finally work as one: governed, searchable, and acting in real time.
We don't sell "digital transformation." We ship working systems into running plants.
For 21 years, Sphere has been the engineering partner manufacturers call when the stakes are real: regulated environments, live production lines, and legacy systems that cannot go down for a rebuild.
We deploy AI the way plants actually operate: incrementally, measurably, and without stopping the line.
Production-grade, not pilot-grade
We have deployed AI in GxP-validated life sciences facilities. If it can pass FDA-adjacent scrutiny, it can survive your plant floor.
Works with what you have
Your ERP, MES, SCADA, and historian stay. We integrate, modernize, and layer intelligence on top, without rip-and-replace ransom.
Governed from day one
Every deployment runs on SphereIQ: access controls, audit trails, compliance, and cost governance built in from the first sprint.
Eight ways manufacturers put Sphere to work.
Each one is a scoped, priced engagement with a named outcome, not a discovery workshop that ends in a slide deck.
Knowledge · Workforce
Plant Knowledge AI - the Company Brain for your factory
Every manual, SOP, work order, maintenance log, and tribal-knowledge binder becomes one governed, searchable brain. Technicians ask in plain language; answers cite the source.
Proven: 60x faster issue resolution
Explore Engram EnterpriseReliability · IoT
Predictive Maintenance & Asset Intelligence
IoT sensor streams and AI models flag failures before they happen. Maintenance shifts from calendar-based to condition-based.
Target: up to 50% less unplanned downtime
Read the deep diveQuality · Computer Vision
AI-Powered Root-Cause Diagnostics
Centralized production data plus AI analysis cut root-cause diagnosis time from weeks to hours, catching quality issues before they turn into scrap.
4-6 weeks → 1 day diagnosis time
See the case studySupply Chain · Forecasting
Unified Data Across ERP, IoT & Plant Floor
A single data lake connecting legacy ERP and IoT sensor streams gives teams real-time visibility to drive continuous improvement — rolled out across multiple production sites.
5-week POC to multi-site rollout
See the case studyOperations · Agentic AI
Agentic Workflows for the Back Office of the Plant
Order entry, inventory reconciliation, quality reporting, supplier documents, and customs paperwork handled by AI agents with human checkpoints.
Typical: hours of processing reduced to minutes
Explore Agentic AISystems · ERP/MES
ERP Modernization & Systems Integration
NetSuite and cloud ERP implementations, MES/ERP/SCADA integration, and Platform Reboot for legacy systems everyone's afraid to touch.
NetSuite · Cloud ERP · Legacy modernization
Explore NetSuite servicesSimulation · Twin
Enterprise Twin - beyond the machine-level digital twin
A living model of your operation: lines, inventory, orders, and constraints, so teams can simulate before they commit.
Simulate decisions before spending on them
Explore SphereIQGovernance · Sustainability
AI Governance, FinOps & CSRD Carbon Reporting
As AI spreads across plants, someone has to govern cost, access, compliance, and sustainability reporting. SphereIQ and CSRD Carbon automate the controls.
Governed AI plus automated ESG reporting
Explore AI GovernanceWhat is downtime actually costing you?
Move the sliders. The number on the right is what unplanned downtime likely costs your operation this year, and what a 40% reduction through predictive maintenance and knowledge AI would return.
24 hrs
$18,000
Estimated annual downtime cost
$5.2M
A 40% reduction returns about $2.1M / year
Numbers from plants and operations we've already changed.
Monarch Air Group - operational knowledge, one question away
Decades of operational documents became a single AI knowledge layer. Time to resolve issues dropped 60-fold, the template for what Plant Knowledge AI does on a factory floor.
60x faster resolution · 35,000+ documents
Global glass fiber manufacturer - vision AI on the line
Computer-vision quality control outperformed manual inspection while eliminating operator fatigue and sampling gaps. Every unit inspected, around the clock.
92% defect detection · running 24/7
Read the storyFortune 500 manufacturer - inventory intelligence
AI-driven planning improved forecast accuracy 83% and cut overstock 27%, releasing $7.5M in working capital without adding a single warehouse.
$7.5M working capital freed · 83% better forecasts
Read the storyAI Technician Knowledge Assistant - in regulated facilities
We deployed a technician-facing AI assistant inside GxP life sciences facilities, one of the strictest proving grounds there is.
GxP validated deployment
Read the storyConsumer electronics manufacturer - automated operations
Order entry, inventory reconciliation, and quality reporting automated end to end, now evolving into full agentic workflows.
RPA to AI · order-to-report automation
Read the storyQuestions manufacturing leaders ask us.
Direct answers — the same ones we'd give across the table.
How much does unplanned downtime cost a manufacturer?+-
Typically $10,000-$50,000 per hour for mid-size plants, far more in automotive and process industries. The visible cost is usually half the story: expedited freight, overtime, penalties, and scrapped WIP compound it. Predictive maintenance programs commonly cut unplanned downtime by up to 50%.
What's the fastest AI win for a manufacturing plant?+-
Knowledge AI is usually live in 6-8 weeks. Making manuals, SOPs, and maintenance history instantly searchable requires no new sensors or line changes, and it pays off the first time a night-shift technician resolves an issue without waking anyone up.
How do we capture knowledge before our senior people retire?+-
Ingest manuals, work orders, tickets, emails, and recorded walkthroughs into a governed retrieval platform so technicians can query decades of experience in plain language with cited sources.
Can AI work with our legacy ERP and MES?+-
Yes, without rip-and-replace. We connect AI layers to legacy ERP, MES, SCADA, and historians through integration middleware and APIs. Where the underlying system is truly end-of-life, Platform Reboot modernizes it incrementally while production keeps running.
How long until we see ROI?+-
90-180 days for a well-scoped first deployment. Our fixed-scope AI Diagnostic identifies your highest-ROI use case and gives you a costed roadmap in 2-3 weeks.
Is our data safe? Who governs the AI?+-
Every Sphere deployment runs on SphereIQ governance: role-based access, full audit trails, cost controls, and compliance reporting. We've passed GxP validation in life sciences facilities, the strictest bar in industry.
Talk to a manufacturing engineer
No obligation. A real technical conversation about downtime, knowledge loss, quality, forecasting, ERP, or governance.
Tell us about your operation. Within one business day, a Sphere engineer will come back with an honest read on where AI can and can't help you, and what it would take.