The Industrial AI Readiness Assessment
Four pillars measured independently, a portfolio of use cases scored on value and effort, and a sequenced plan with budgets attached. Built to satisfy NGen's requirements and, more importantly, to be worth doing if the funding did not exist.
A readiness profile, not a readiness score.
A single number hides the thing you need to know. This plant is well led and well equipped, and completely blocked on data quality — so the first six months of its plan are about data, not models. That is a different conversation than "you scored 61."
Each pillar is scored against the same instrument every time, which means your result is comparable to a benchmark rather than to one consultant's opinion.
Illustrative profile. A real one arrives with the evidence behind every score.
What we actually look at in each pillar.
Can this organization carry a change through?
- Executive sponsorship — named, not implied
- Decision rights and who can actually approve spend
- Track record with the last three system changes
- Capacity for change alongside the current workload
- Whether a real budget line exists beyond the grant
Most stalled AI projects were never blocked technically. They ran out of sponsor.
What would a solution have to live on?
- Systems inventory — ERP, MES, CAD, quality, scheduling
- Integration surface: what has an API and what does not
- Shop-floor connectivity and machine data availability
- Infrastructure, hosting posture, and IT support model
- Security and access constraints that will shape the design
We have integrated with ERP and CRM systems that were never meant to be integrated with. We scope for what is there.
Can your data drive a decision today?
- What exists, where it lives, and who owns it
- Completeness and accuracy on the fields that matter
- History depth — how far back a usable series goes
- Whether the shop floor's real process is captured anywhere
- Governance, retention, and the risk of acting on it
This is where most SME manufacturers score lowest, and where the fastest, cheapest gains usually are.
Who runs it after we leave?
- Current analytical and technical capability, by role
- Who would own a deployed system day to day
- Appetite and time available for training
- Reliance on single individuals and key-person risk
- Build, buy, or partner — judged against your actual bench
A plan that assumes a data engineer you do not have and will not hire is not a plan.
Readiness Evaluation Report
- Scored profile across all four pillars, with the evidence
- Systems and data inventory as found
- Constraint analysis — what actually limits the plant today
- Benchmark against comparable Canadian SME manufacturers
- The blockers that must clear before anything else starts
Industrial AI Implementation Plan
- Use-case portfolio, each scored on value and effort
- Sequenced 12–24 month roadmap with dependencies
- Build-versus-buy call for each recommended item
- Budget envelope and expected return per initiative
- Success metrics defined before the work starts
- Risk register with owners and mitigations
Plus a 90-minute executive readout. Delivered to your leadership team, in person where practical. The documents matter, but the decision gets made in the room — so we make sure the room has what it needs.
How the four weeks run.
Plant visit and interviews
A full day on site. We walk the floor, follow a job end to end, and interview leadership, operations, scheduling, quality, and IT. The floor tells you things the systems do not.
Systems and data examination
Read-only extracts from your ERP and adjacent systems, profiled for completeness, accuracy, and history depth. We test whether the data can carry the decisions people want to automate.
Scoring, use-case development, validation
The four pillars are scored and the use-case portfolio is built. We bring the draft back to the people who would live with it and let them push on it before it hardens.
Plan, documents, executive readout
The roadmap is sequenced and budgeted, both documents are finalised, and we present to your leadership. NGen reporting is prepared at the same time so the reimbursement is not held up by paperwork.
Total demand on your team is roughly 13 hours across four weeks, concentrated in week one. We schedule around production, not the other way round.
Start with the eligibility call.
Half an hour, no deck. We confirm whether the funding applies to you and what the assessment would examine in your plant specifically.