Industrial / AI pilots

Manufacturers, process plants, and discrete OEMs will hand you an innovation-center slot, a lab PoC on offline data, and a "let's explore AI" thread without much thought. None of that makes a pilot. A convertible pilot has a named plant, line, cell, or SKU family, a compelling event, written criteria ops and finance can underwrite, and a path to a PO or MSA if the proof lands.

Keep unpaid co-development, university or lab research, and science-project PoCs separate from customer pilots. Lab demos can build evidence later, and they seldom close deals this quarter. If one SOW mixes unpaid co-dev with a paid commercial path, name which clock you are on.

Hunt for compelling events: a planned outage or turnaround window, the CAPEX budget cycle, a quality escape or scrap spike, a throughput bottleneck, a labor shortage on a cell, a spike in energy cost per unit, or a corporate digital / Industry 4.0 mandate with a dated target.

Industrial buyers expect OT access work to start up front. In the first week of serious interest, start OT security, the network segmentation and remote-access review, MES / SCADA / historian / ERP integration, safety and change control (MOC), IT vendor risk, and the SOC2 questionnaire. Run them before or in parallel with the plant-floor proof so you aren't starting after operators have said they like the dashboard.

Write down the committee. The plant champion (plant manager, VP Ops, or continuous-improvement lead) is not the economic buyer. The check-writer is often the COO, the plant GM, corporate ops, or a CAPEX committee. Plant enthusiasm without finance and OT/IT clearance dies after the demo.

Work backwards from your target ACV and the MSA / PO process. If production requires remote access through a DMZ, a historian tag list, or CAPEX committee sign-off, start those while the pilot runs instead of after the innovation-center tour.

Write criteria a plant manager and a CFO or plant controller can both sign, and instrument them inside the pilot window on a bounded scope (one line, one cell, one SKU family): OEE, scrap rate, unplanned downtime hours, cycle time, first-pass yield, energy per unit, or changeover time.

"Operators liked the dashboard" and "AI accuracy looked good in the lab" won't pass as success criteria. Price the pilot when you can, and put the phase-two commercial terms (sites, lines, ACV intent, MSA / PO path) in writing so the pilot can't turn into a permanent unpaid PoC.

Land a quick win in weeks 1–2 that ops leadership and finance can see without living in the UI. A one-page memo with one underwritable metric beats another product tour.

Hold a formal midpoint against the written scorecard. Adjust only against the criteria, and don't expand to a second line or plant without saying so.

Keep OT access, network segmentation, MES / SCADA / historian / ERP integration, safety / MOC, IT vendor risk, and procurement moving each week. Industrial pilots miss the planned outage, CAPEX window, or fiscal close when the team finds OT remote-access or tag-list gaps in the final week.

Restate the criteria, the evidence, and the commercial path from the agreement, then ask for the PO or MSA schedule. "Ops loved the demo" without a signature is a stall.

If budget or risk appetite wobbles, cut to one line, one cell, or one SKU family. Don't teach procurement that a successful plant pilot earns a list-price haircut.

Name the industrial stall mode before you improvise.

Treat the pilot scope (one line, one cell, one SKU family) as a proof sample. Expand from the phase-two price and the MSA / PO terms in the agreement.

Add lines, sites, or SKU families after production is live. A published win (with permission) helps you sell the next plant. If you keep "pilot pricing" going across a manufacturing network, each expansion starts at a discount.

Use this as a pattern drill. It is not a claimed case study, and the numbers are illustrative.

Use the Industrial AI pilot scorecard template for the blank worksheet, a filled example, the OT/IT/integration parallel-path checklist, and a copy-ready AI prompt.