The manufacturing industry widely agrees that AI has tremendous potential to free up productivity. The 2025 Global State of AI survey by McKinsey highlights that while nearly 80% of businesses use AI in at least one function, only half of those use it in more than three functions. Manufacturing and procurement are also among the least AI-operated functions. Not integrating AI throughout the entire value chain creates only pockets of excellence with uncertain on-the-ground impact. As a result, any gains in efficiency or reductions in time to deploy are likely to be quickly offset before the project goes live.
Vention’s full-stack AI-powered platform takes a different approach. Rather than treating AI as a bolt-on gimmick, it is built-in throughout the value chain, from design to deployment.
Let’s explore how AI simplifies each step in the manufacturing automation process.
AI for Automation and Machine Design
Getting a machine design right the first time is crucial to launching automation projects efficiently and without costly back-and-forth. The traditional route of iterating designs with no visibility into pricing or parts compatibility makes it challenging to control automation budgets and timelines. Additionally, any errors in the design stage may require costly workarounds during assembly. For manufacturing businesses with limited access to skilled automation designers, these challenges can often be the primary barrier to automation.
The AI-powered Design Assistant in Vention’s cloud-based MachineBuilder platform helps reduce this complexity by eliminating the guesswork in part selection and error validation. It essentially helps “auto-complete” the design with intelligent part suggestions. Adding connectors such as gussets can be done with a single click by hovering over intersections. Designing with AI makes the entire process much more accessible while also building confidence in design decisions. Anyone with little to no experience can now design automation projects in minutes.
“Resizing multiple extrusions in one click, and watching the AI-powered Design Assistant automatically flag potential errors, made me realize how much time I had wasted with traditional CAD”
Adam Dunn, Automation Engineer, Acutec Precision Aerospace
AI for Machine and Robot Programming
Programming is the second-biggest hurdle faced by many small and medium-sized businesses trying to automate their key processes. A shortage of skilled technicians with programming expertise necessitates working with external specialists, which can be both costly and time-consuming.
Vention’s MachineLogic platform, integrated with Vention’s AI Copilot, addresses this challenge by enabling users of varying skill levels to program their machines and robot cells. A simple prompt to the AI Copilot helps generate lines of Python code right in your browser. It’s like having a robotics engineer at your side, turning specifications into code and speeding up development.
The built-in intelligence in MachineLogic goes beyond AI Copilot, with a physics engine that accurately simulates a digital twin of your machine or robot cell. Gravity, collisions, and motions behave exactly like the real world, allowing you to test and refine interactions and timing. Once your program is validated in the cloud with your digital twin, the code can be instantly deployed to the actual machine with just a click, making the entire process seamless.
“As we were new to automating wafer loading, simulation was crucial for validating our design before hardware commitment. Vention provided excellent, direct support, making the project much smoother.”
Collin Jung, Tooling Engineer, Solestial
Physical AI for Grasping, Perception, and Motion
The unpredictable and repetitive nature of common manufacturing tasks makes them challenging to automate. A human hand is capable of 27 degrees of motion, which makes tasks such as picking diverse objects or sorting them second nature. However, this is a difficult challenge to solve for robotics and industrial automation, where precision is paramount.
This is where AI-powered inference capabilities are critical in helping robots become adaptable operators, capable of performing a multitude of tasks without manual reprogramming. However, running sophisticated AI foundation models requires a new generation of controllers. Vention’s MachineMotion AI controller, with an embedded NVIDIA Jetson GPU, directly enables advanced AI processing to run next-generation computer vision models.
Running AI-powered operators has real implications for everyday manufacturing realities. It can hasten changeovers and help manage diverse colors, shapes, and materials without the need for extensive programming. It also adds the ability to work under varying light conditions, enabling lights-out production.
For manufacturers in high-mix environments, this means transforming traditional robots into AI-powered operators. Empowered by AI-driven perception, enhanced dexterity, and context-aware motion planning, this new team member can handle complex, unstructured, and repetitive tasks that could only be performed by humans until now. In turn, this frees the existing workforce for higher-value tasks, improving productivity and efficiency across manufacturing operations.
The Future of Manufacturing: Zero to Automated in Just a Few Clicks
For manufacturers across industries, AI has the potential to solve the long-standing challenges of finding skilled design specialists and programmers. Advances in physical AI take this a step further, making constantly changing product shapes, sizes, and orientations a nonissue.
With no-code automation and mission-based programming, advanced robotics are now accessible and affordable to manufacturers of all sizes, unlocking tasks that were previously too complex or costly to automate. For manufacturing engineers and integration specialists, this shift reduces time spent on programming and sensor integration, freeing them to focus on optimizing production and driving innovation.
Ultimately, Vention’s full-stack AI platform is making automation more adaptive and accessible for companies of every size.
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Demo Day 2025: See AI-powered Automation in Action
AI in manufacturing automation is here and already helping solve challenges such as complex hardware, a patchwork of software, and endless trial and error. Demo Day 2025 is your chance to see this new AI-powered way to automate in action. Join us for a deep dive into Vention’s breakthroughs that are making automation fast and easy.
Register now to learn about the latest developments and practical applications of AI in automation.
