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Insights & Updates
Latest thinking on agentic operations, industrial AI, and building trust in autonomous systems.
Six Things Pharma Should Prepare to Demonstrate About an AI Agent
The draft European rules for artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine manufacturing are blunt about language models. Annex 22 to the European Union (EU) Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) guidelines, published for consultation in July 2025, says generative AI and large language models "should not be
Pieter van Schalkwyk
Should Multi-Agent Systems Negotiate?
Some decisions are negotiations. Almost no multi-agent system is built that way.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
The Agent Is the Cheap Part
Owning your agent IP and owning the platform underneath it are separate commitments. Most build business cases only price the first.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
Software-Defined Operations: An Architecture for Agentic Operations
Software-defined operations is an architectural pattern that decouples operational decision and coordination logic from the underlying applications, automation systems, and physical infrastructure, enabling that logic to be configured, changed, and governed through software. Agentic Operations needs
Pieter van Schalkwyk
The AI Labs Want Cover. Industry Never Had Any.
The frontier labs want a regulator to answer for what their models do. In industry, the company that runs the plant answers for what its equipment does, and it builds the guardrails itself.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
Maintenance AI Agents Need Rules for When They Disagree
McKinsey shows what single AI agents can already do in maintenance. The harder problem starts when several of them work on the same plant.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
The Operational Decision Owner’s Dilemma
Who funds the change and owns the outcome when agentic operations crosses departmental boundaries? Agentic operations can help a business evaluate production, maintenance, energy and workforce decisions together as conditions change. Acting on a shared assessment may require departments to accept di
Pieter van Schalkwyk
Software-Defined Operations Writes the Decision Down for AI Agents
Software-defined operations means the logic behind an operating decision lives in one place in software. Today it is spread across spreadsheets, procedures, control settings, approval routes and the experience of a few senior people.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
How Much Rigor Does Your Operational AI Need?
During workshop sessions with a large oil and gas company, we discussed how different artificial intelligence (AI) models could be used across operational use cases. Some applications allowed room to experiment with frontier models and change models regularly.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
Software-Defined Operations: Change How Operations Work
A new book from XMPro CEO Pieter van Schalkwyk. Software-Defined Operations is an architectural pattern that decouples operational decision and coordination logic from applications, automation and infrastructure, so it can be configured, changed and governed through software. 44 pages, free PDF.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
XMPro Named in Nine Gartner® Reports in Three Weeks Covering Agentic AI, Agent Orchestration, Multiagent Generative Systems, and AI Agent Management Platforms
XMPro's Agentic Operations Platform combines APEX orchestration, MAGS multi-agent execution, StreamDesigner integration, and composite AI reasoning for governed agentic AI in industrial operations.
Wouter Beneke
XMPro Named as an Example Vendor in the 2026 Gartner® Market Overview: AI Agent Management Platforms
XMPro APEX is the industrial-grade AI Agent Management Platform named alongside AWS, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, UiPath, and IBM.
Wouter Beneke
XMPro Named as a Sample Vendor for Agent Orchestration category in the Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for AI and Cloud, 2026
XMPro APEX is the industrial-grade Agent Orchestration control plane for edge-to-cloud agentic AI in asset-intensive operations.
Wouter Beneke