AI Meets Live Plant Data in a Single Industrial Workspace
Cognite Flows is emerging as a new kind of industrial AI tool, designed to bring AI-driven insights directly to the plant floor. Instead of forcing operators and engineers to toggle between multiple systems, Flows offers a single-screen interface where real-time operational data, AI recommendations, and applications coexist in one workspace. At its core is Cognite’s Industrial Knowledge Graph, which keeps all information anchored to live operating context, so recommendations are always tied to what is actually happening in the plant. This architecture is particularly important for industrial workflows, where fragmented plant data has historically limited the impact of digital initiatives. By unifying data and context, Cognite Flows helps turn raw sensor readings, maintenance records, and process logs into actionable guidance that frontline workers can use in day-to-day operations, rather than leaving advanced analytics locked away in central technical teams.
From Months to Days: App Development Acceleration with Agentic AI
Beyond visualization, Cognite Flows is reshaping how industrial software is built. The platform incorporates agentic AI coding tools and an AI-native architecture that allow developers to generate, test, and deploy tailored applications far faster than traditional methods. Cognite reports that projects which once required months of custom development can now be implemented in a matter of days, delivering substantial app development acceleration for industrial users. This shift directly addresses a long-standing bottleneck in industrial AI tools: slow, bespoke coding work that delayed automation and decision-support apps. With Flows, developers can focus on domain logic and safety-critical requirements while AI assists with boilerplate code, integration patterns, and workflow orchestration. The result is a more agile development cycle, where new use cases—such as condition monitoring, digital procedures, or AI-assisted troubleshooting—can be iterated rapidly, deployed quickly, and refined continually based on user feedback from the field.
Unifying Industrial Workflows for Frontline Operators
A central design goal of Cognite Flows is to simplify the daily reality of frontline staff. Operators and engineers no longer need to jump between disconnected systems to manage alarms, review trends, or execute procedures. Instead, the platform brings plant data integration, AI recommendations, and workflow tools into a single environment tailored to each worker’s role. This unified approach makes industrial workflows more consistent and reduces the cognitive load of managing complex operations. AI suggestions are embedded directly within task-centric screens, helping workers prioritize interventions, interpret anomalies, and coordinate with maintenance or production teams. The focus on usability aligns with a broader industry push to make industrial AI tools practical at the plant, refinery, and production-site level, not just in central analytics hubs. By bridging data, context, and user experience, Flows helps organizations turn digital strategies into operational realities that frontline teams can adopt and trust.
Capturing Expertise and Improving Asset Transparency
Early adopters of Cognite Flows illustrate how combining AI with live plant data can preserve expertise and enhance transparency. Idemitsu is using the platform to capture accumulated plant knowledge and convert it into a digital legacy. By leveraging real-time knowledge graphs, the company anticipates that applications built on Flows will evolve into proactive AI agents capable of managing complex operations, effectively encoding specialist know-how into dynamic, data-driven tools. Healthcare manufacturer B. Braun highlights another dimension: asset visibility. The company reports that Cognite Flows provided a unified, contextualized view of its data landscape, improving how asset health information is presented to users. Within four weeks, B. Braun refined its user experience and visualization of asset data, with near-instant updates informed by user feedback. Cognite also points to a global pharmaceutical customer that significantly reduced the time required to deliver automated AI workflows, underscoring the platform’s potential to accelerate digital transformation across critical operations.
A New Template for Scaling Industrial AI
Industry analysts see Cognite Flows as part of a broader shift toward industrial AI tools built specifically for operational environments. According to IDC, many industrial organizations struggle to scale AI because their needs are not well served by general-purpose enterprise technologies. Flows builds on Cognite’s core data and context capabilities to offer a template for AI “built the right way” for industry, blending plant data integration, AI agents, and low-friction development. With more than 30% of Cognite’s customer base and partners already enabled on Flows—including companies like B. Braun and Idemitsu Kosan, alongside partners Radix, L&T Technology Services, and RoviSys—the platform is gaining traction as a unifying layer for industrial workflows. By shrinking development timelines, simplifying user experiences, and keeping AI tightly coupled to live operations, Cognite Flows aims to remove one of the biggest barriers to industrial digital transformation: the slow, painful path from idea to production-ready app.