From Pilot to Plant, closing the gap in Industrial AI: a Joint Event by AG Solution and Barbara

This past Monday, Barbara and AG Solution hosted a closed-door industry event in Barcelona, bringing together a select group of operations and production leaders from across manufacturing sectors. Under the theme “The Factory of the Future: From Pilot to Plant”, the session focused on a challenge that continues to define the pace of industrial transformation: how to move from isolated digital successes to scalable, production-ready capabilities.

The format was intentionally simple—keynotes, a joint live demo, and an open discussion—but the conversations were anything but. With voices from the shop floor and the strategy room alike, the tone quickly shifted from presentation to honest exchange.

Representing Barbara, Javier Rodríguez (VP Sales), Jaime Vélez (Inside Sales Manager) and Enrique Ramírez (Senior Solutions Architect) shared how Edge AI is reshaping the way industrial applications are deployed and managed at scale. From AG Solution, Ricard Torralba (Senior AI Consultant) and Marc Olivé (Innovation Director), brought a complementary perspective grounded in years of hands-on experience implementing AI in process manufacturing environments.

Together, both teams set the stage for what this collaboration is about: not showcasing technology, but addressing a structural problem that many manufacturers already know firsthand.

A Shared Reality: The Pilot-to-Scale Gap

A consistent message emerged from the industrial leaders in the room: moving from pilot to scale remains a recurring challenge, regardless of the sector or vertical. What stood out was the depth and openness of the discussion that followed, with participants sharing their perspectives and real-world experience, often converging on the same conclusion. Barbara was recognized as a strong technological foundation to enable this transition to scale, while also highlighting the importance of combining that capability with the deep domain expertise of partners such as AG Solution. 

Three recurring themes emerged:

1. Scaling requires more than technical success
A model that works in isolation is only the starting point. Bridging the gap to production demands a deep understanding of operational environments—constraints, variability, and the realities of the shop floor. As several participants noted, this is where many initiatives stall.

2. Design for scale from day one
Proofs of concept cannot be treated as disposable experiments. To generate long-term impact, they must be built with the plant’s real conditions in mind from the outset—architecture, data flows, and deployment models included.

3. Data must be treated as a product
Without clear ownership, governance, and structure, data becomes a bottleneck rather than an enabler. Organizations that succeed at scaling AI are those that treat data as a core asset, not a byproduct.

These insights are not new—but they are often overlooked. And they are precisely where this partnership is focused.

A Partnership Built for Execution

This event marked the first public milestone in the strategic partnership between AG Solution and Barbara.

AG Solution brings nearly two decades of advisory and implementation expertise across industries such as pharmaceuticals, food & beverage, and chemicals. Their approach starts with understanding the operational model, identifying high-impact use cases, and designing architectures that can scale.

Barbara complements this with its industrial Edge AI platform, enabling the deployment, orchestration, and scaling of applications across thousands distributed edge nodes in 23 countries. By running AI closer to machines and processes, organizations can act in real time—improving efficiency, resilience, and decision-making.

Together, the partnership bridges a critical gap: from strategy to execution, and from pilot to scale.

As Ricard Torralba from AG Solution put it during the session:

“To truly move the needle, local pilots need to scale—and Barbara makes that possible. Advanced AI models like the ones we build at AG Solution can be replicated across plants in minutes. That means the value proven in Plant A is just a few clicks away from running in Plant B, Plant C, and every plant that follows.”

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More Than an Event

The morning concluded with a standing lunch, where conversations continued well beyond the agenda. If anything, it reinforced the spirit of the session: practical, candid, and grounded in real challenges.

This was not a technology announcement. It was a commitment—to tackling one of the most persistent problems in industrial AI, together with the people who face it every day.

And this is only the beginning. 

More to come!

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