IFS introduced the Industrial AI Harness, the operational foundation of IFS Intelligence, to help enterprises use AI within the permissions, policies, and operational rules that govern their businesses. The company says the harness extends security, safety, governance, and trust controls already embedded across IFS.

As AI moves from answering questions to performing work, industrial companies face the challenge of ensuring it can operate within real processes. IFS says the harness provides context, permissions, governance, and operational controls for its Digital Workers to carry out tasks within established business rules.

New IFS research found that 43% of frontline teams had trained and introduced agentic digital workers into day-to-day operations over the past 12 months. However, only 11% had validated AI outputs for safety, quality, or mission-critical processes, and 11% had established controls for AI use with sensitive or export-controlled data.

Separate research from Futurum found that 66% of enterprises plan to invest in digital workers in the next 12 months, while 5.7% trust AI to act fully autonomously.

IFS says its Industrial AI Harness is designed to let companies adopt AI without choosing between safety and the speed of innovation. It operates through customer identity systems, permissions, business rules, approvals, and audit controls. It inherits access controls from connected systems, with IFS Cloud serving as the foundation source. IFS says no raw data is sent to external AI providers, and users can access only information and actions they are authorized to use.

Mo Dawood, CIO of Eight Group, said the company decided against building AI agents in-house because of the governance, technical expertise, and knowledge required, as well as the pace of change. “We’re a field service business, not a software business,” Dawood said. He added that the harness supports governance, monitors orchestration, and helps digital workers act safely.

The harness brings together six components: planning and orchestration; skills and connectors; memory and context; guardrails and permissions; verification and escalation; and observability and auditability. Together, these components coordinate tasks, control which systems agents can use, enforce permissions and approvals, check work, escalate when needed, and log decisions and actions for review.

The system is designed to work across AI models and services, allowing IFS to select technology for each task and account for customer requirements such as where data can be processed. IFS describes IFS Intelligence as offering data sovereignty, staged autonomy from copilot support to autonomous action, industrial context, and governance across cloud, harness, and model layers.

Toby Rees, Global Head of AI Trust at IFS, said trust is a fundamental requirement as organizations scale AI across critical assets, supply chains, service operations, and enterprise workflows. He said the harness provides a foundation for IFS Intelligence by combining intelligence with context, control, accountability, and operational discipline.

The Industrial AI Harness is intended to help industrial companies apply AI within their existing operational controls.

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