Group autonomy policy
One policy model for the group with per-site override and approval chains. Tag allow-lists, process envelopes and limits reviewed and versioned like code.
Enterprise
One policy. Every cell. Every forge.
Multi-site forging groups standardise on Forgiron for the governance as much as the control: one autonomy policy with per-site override, one audit trail, fleet-managed plant-edge nodes, and alloy, die and qualification models that stay private to each plant.
Illustrative scenario: Cell F-2 · 2,500 t closed-die press · 42CrMo4 connecting rod, one lot, one approval gate
Enterprise features
What the Enterprise tier adds
Items marked planned follow the 6 to 12 month roadmap.
SSO, SCIM and tag-level RBAC
Named approvers, role-based access down to the tag. Planned for the 6 to 12 month release.
Plant-edge fleet management
Model versions promoted by cell with canary rollout and automatic fallback across every forge. On-prem and air-gapped options.
Custom alloy, die and qualification models
Per-site process models built on the plant's own alloys, dies and part families and kept private to that tenant.
Cross-plant benchmarks
Yield, scrap, die life, energy and inspection escapes compared across forges without moving die designs or recipes across tenant boundaries. Data-network tiers are planned.
Dedicated engineer, SLAs
A dedicated deployment engineer, quarterly model review per forge and SLA terms set per agreement.
Deployment
Where it runs
The plant edge is always local. The control plane can be cloud, on-prem or absent.
| Option | Plant edge | Control plane | For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud control plane | Jetson nodes at the cell | Forgiron cloud, per-tenant isolation | Most forges; cloud training optional |
| On-prem control plane | Jetson nodes at the cell | In the plant's data centre | Die-IP sensitive producers, strict controls |
| Air-gapped | Jetson nodes at the cell | In the plant, no external link | Defense and qualified aerospace work |
| Edge-only degradation | Returns to controller last known-good | Unreachable | What happens on any control-plane loss |
Enterprise
Standardise autonomy across the group
One policy model, one audit trail, one benchmark across every cell in every forge, with the alloy, die and qualification models kept private to each site.
- SSO and role-based access down to the tag level, planned for the 6 to 12 month release
- Group-wide autonomy policy with per-site override and approval chains
- Cross-plant benchmarking on yield, scrap, die life, energy and inspection escapes
- On-prem and plant-edge deployment, with air-gapped operation for defense and sensitive producers
- Edge autonomy that survives control-plane loss by returning to the controller's last known-good state
- Dedicated deployment engineer and quarterly model review per forge
Run timeline · scenario
One scenario run, step by step
Every Forgiron run is an ordered, inspectable sequence. This is run_7c2e41 on Cell F-2 · 2,500 t closed-die press · 42CrMo4 connecting rod. Scenario completes in 10 steps with one approval gate. Surface temperature held at 1,205 °C with a 14 °C core-to-surface spread, fill predicted and confirmed complete, one lap precursor at the flash land cleared by a blow-energy trim, lot L-80412 released with full genealogy.
run_7c2e41
Cell F-2 · 2,500 t closed-die press · 42CrMo4 connecting rod
illustrative scenario
SUCCEEDED
-
01
ingest.order
SUCCEEDED
0.6 s
Plant Orchestrator · Pulled the part spec for the 42CrMo4 connecting rod from MES: forging window 1,180 to 1,230 °C, two-blow closed-die schedule, flash land 2.4 mm, temper to 28 to 32 HRC, 1,200 pieces. Locked the qualified process envelope.
-
02
twin.simulate
SUCCEEDED
52 s
Forge Twin · Simulated 24 candidate heat-and-stroke recipes on the as-forged twin for soak time, blow energy and spray timing, ranked on predicted fill, lap risk at the flash land, die load and kWh per piece.
-
03
heat.soak
SUCCEEDED
2 m 10 s
Heat-and-Billet · Induction power on IH-2 stepped down 4% in the final soak stage as the pyrometer read 1,205 °C at the surface. Core-to-surface spread estimated at 14 °C against a 20 °C limit, no overheat, scale growth inside the window.
-
04
die.spray
SUCCEEDED
48 s
Die-and-Lube · Lower-die spray dose raised 6% and cooling extended 0.3 s as die surface temperature climbed through 240 °C. Heat-check growth on cavity 2 flagged at 0.31 of the die-change threshold.
-
05
approve.human
APPROVAL
46 s
Plant Orchestrator · Recipe #9 moves second-blow energy 3% below the standing schedule. Press-schedule changes stay supervised on this part family, so the step was held for the shift forging engineer and approved at 05:47:31.
-
06
forge.stroke
SUCCEEDED
1 m 36 s
Forge-and-Press · Two-blow schedule executed with the approved energy. High-speed vision and force curves confirmed complete fill on the first ten pieces; predicted lap risk at the flash land fell from 0.27 to 0.08.
-
07
inspect.fuse
SUCCEEDED
continuous
Defect-and-Inspect · Eight cameras, two thermal cameras and the ultrasonic station fused at the edge. One lap precursor at the flash land on piece 212 flagged and cleared by a 1.5% blow-energy trim inside the approved envelope; the piece was routed to MPI and passed.
-
08
handle.transfer
SUCCEEDED
continuous
Robot-and-Handling · Press-to-trim transfer planned and executed by the handling robot at 11 s per piece, temperature loss in transfer 38 °C against a 60 °C limit, interlock zones clear throughout.
-
09
heat.treat
SUCCEEDED
continuous
Trim-and-Heat · Temper furnace HT-1 zone 2 trimmed 5 °C against the predicted hardness from the recorded heat and stroke history. First hardness checks read 30 HRC, inside 28 to 32.
-
10
lot.release
SUCCEEDED
1 m 20 s
Quality-and-Conformance · Lot L-80412 released: genealogy written (billet lot, heat curve, stroke record, die cycles, inspection map, approvals, temper record) and dispositioned against IATF 16949 criteria with cited evidence for the quality engineer's sign-off.
Guardrails
An agent that can move a press schedule needs a leash
Forgiron writes to production equipment. Every capability is scoped, every write is policy-checked against the qualified envelope, and every action is written to an append-only audit log the forge owns.
- Bounded action space. Each agent writes only to an explicit tag allow-list, inside per-tag rate and magnitude limits and the qualified process envelope for the part family.
- Policy engine before every write. Autonomy level, shift, part family, interlock state and operator presence are evaluated before a setpoint moves.
- Human-in-the-loop gates. Press-schedule changes, die changes and lot release wait for a named approver. Safety-critical press control stays guarded by PLC interlocks and engineer approval until qualification evidence supports more.
- Immutable audit log. Append-only and exportable. Every action records source evidence, the approved process envelope, confidence, estimated yield, scrap, die-life and energy impact, rollback path, approver and lot scope.
- Hard fallback. Loss of the edge node, the network or a model returns control to the furnace, press or die controller's last known-good state. Interlocks are never in Forgiron's path.
- Tenant and die-IP isolation. Die designs, part drawings, alloy recipes and quality records never cross a customer boundary. On-prem deployment is available for sensitive producers.
Compliance posture
| Item | Scope | Status |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 Type I | Cloud control plane | QUEUED Planned, first 6 months |
| SOC 2 Type II | Cloud control plane | QUEUED Planned, 6 to 12 months |
| SSO and RBAC | Console and approvals | QUEUED Planned, 6 to 12 months |
| AS9100 and NADCAP assurance packages | Disposition and genealogy evidence | QUEUED Planned, 6 to 12 months; not a certification claim |
| Standards-cited reasoning | AS9100, IATF 16949, NADCAP, ASTM documents | RUNNING In the design, every answer cites its source |
| Per-tenant and die-IP isolation | Recipes, die designs, models, memory | RUNNING In the design from day one |
| On-prem and plant-edge deployment | Sensitive producers | RUNNING Design option |
Autonomy
Four levels, set per agent and per tag
A forge does not go from manual to unattended in one step. Forgiron makes the level explicit, auditable and reversible at any time. The first release runs shadow mode, then assist mode, then bounded autonomy on low-risk actions. Press control stays supervised until the part family is qualified.
| Level | What the agent does | What the human does | Where it sits in a pilot |
|---|---|---|---|
| L1 · Shadow | Reads thermal, vision, ultrasonic, MPI, press, die, robot and MES signals; predicts and recommends; writes nothing | Runs the cell as today; compares predictions to inspection and engineer outcomes | Shadow mode, baseline 30 to 60 days |
| L2 · Assist | Proposes heating, press, die-lube, routing and handling actions with evidence, confidence, envelope and rollback path | Approves each action in the review console | Assist mode, the remainder of a 90 to 180 day pilot |
| L3 · Bounded | Executes pre-approved low-risk actions: inspection routing, lube timing, heating and soak adjustments, robot path variants, inside PLC and safety limits | Approves press-schedule changes, die changes and lot release | Graduated autonomy, after audited accuracy and ROI |
| L4 · Scaled | Supervised press-schedule adaptation for qualified part families, across cells and sites | Sets the envelope; reviews the shift record and the evaluation results | Planned; after golden-dataset evaluation, simulation validation and quality sign-off |
Integrations
It speaks forge, not cloud
Forgiron reads and writes through the systems already on the floor. No rip and replace, no parallel historian, no new HMI to learn. Vendor names are examples of systems found in forges, not certified integrations; connector availability is confirmed per site.
Induction and furnace PLCs (EFD Induction, Ajax TOCCO, Inductotherm, SMS group class systems)
Power, zone and soak reads, guarded writes
Press, hammer and ring-mill controls (SMS group, Schuler, Ajax, Sumitomo and Nedschroef, Danieli class systems)
Force, ram and energy reads; supervised schedule writes
Spray, lubrication and die-cooling systems
Dose, pattern, timing and cooling
Thermal cameras, pyrometers, high-speed cameras at the press
Billet and die temperature, fill, surface defects
Ultrasonic and MPI stations and dimensional systems (Waygate, Evident, Magnaflux class systems)
Scans, indications and dimensions per part
Forging FEM packages (Transvalor Forge, Simufact Forming, QForm, DEFORM class tools)
Model and result exchange with the twin
Robots, manipulators and safety PLCs
Pose, grip and path state inside interlocked limits
Austenitize, quench and temper furnaces
Zone, quench and temper reads, guarded writes
FAQ
Straight answers
The questions plant directors, forging engineers and quality engineers ask in the first meeting.
Yes, but only within an explicit tag allow-list with per-tag rate and magnitude limits, inside the qualified process envelope, and only at the autonomy level your plant has set. Design partners start in shadow mode, where Forgiron writes nothing. Press-schedule changes stay supervised by a named forging engineer until the part family is qualified.
Control returns to the furnace, press or die controller's last known-good state. Forgiron is a supervisory layer on top of the PLCs and interlocks you already run, never a replacement for them, so an outage degrades the cell to its current way of running, not to a stop.
Advisory recommendations start from the physics-based twin and the part spec in the first weeks. Defect, die-wear and heating prediction improve as cell history and labelled outcomes accumulate per part family. The first training sets are sized at 2 million labelled frames and signals, 20,000 heat and press cycles and 10,000 die-life events per design-partner cohort, all design targets.
Only if you choose cloud training. Die designs, part drawings, recipes, process models and quality records are isolated per tenant and never used to train another customer's models. A fully on-prem deployment at the plant edge is available for sensitive producers, and federated learning across sites is planned and waits on data-rights agreements.
You are, the same as with any control strategy, which is why every write is policy-checked, bounded, logged and reversible, and why anything above your risk threshold waits for a named approver. The audit log records the request, the evidence, the envelope applied and the human decision.
A paid pilot of 90 to 180 days on one cell, scoped to a single wedge with a success metric written into the order form: defect-detection accuracy, scrap reduction, die-change reduction, energy reduction or first-pass-quality improvement. The first 30 to 60 days baseline scrap, die life, energy, inspection escapes and takt in shadow mode.
Get started
Standardise the group
Start with one heating, press, die or inspection cell and one measurable baseline. A paid pilot on billet heating and press fill, die life or ultrasonic and MPI defect detection shows the number before you commit further.