Introducing AetherMIP: On-Prem AI for PLC-Controlled Machines

Introducing AetherMIP: On-Prem AI for PLC-Controlled Machines A critical machine goes down mid-shift. The fault code is on the HMI. The answer is in a binder, a drawing set, a PLC program, or the head of the one tech who has seen this before, and that tech is on vacation or retired last spring. Most plants know AI could help here. Most OT teams still say no, and they're right to. Most "plant AI" needs a connection into the control network and asks you to trust software rules to keep the PLC safe. So we built something different. AetherMIP is on-prem AI for PLC machines. It's a resident machine intelligence for one critical asset. It answers from that machine's own documentation and live data, and production data stays inside your plant. What AetherMIP is AetherMIP is a self-contained edge appliance that sits beside one PLC-controlled machine. It loads that machine's schematics, programs, drawings, manuals, and procedures. It reads live values such as fault codes, cycle data, pressures, temperatures, and safety-related tags. It puts all of that in front of the people who run and maintain the equipment: operators, technicians, electricians, and managers. Ask it a question in plain language and you get an answer grounded in this asset, not a generic answer about this type of machine. It cites what it used so a person can check it. A chatbot that "sounds right" is useless on a shift. A cited answer can be checked. As your team confirms what actually worked, that knowledge stays with the machine, with human approval. The best recovery methods stop living only in a few people's heads and start living with the equipment. How it works A one-way hardware path. Live values travel from the PLC to AetherMIP, inside the plant, through a proprietary hardware data diode that Marando builds in-house. The diode has no return channel, so the path can't write back to the PLC. That is a physical limit of the hardware, not a firewall rule or a setting someone can change. No credential, patch, or configuration can turn a one-way device into a two-way connection. Grounded answers, processed locally. All core processing happens on the appliance beside the machine. Production data stays inside the plant, with no cloud dependency on the production floor and no per-token fees. Integrity Watch: alerts only. Integrity Watch watches the live data stream for anomalies, stale data, communication or diode-link problems, sequence issues, safety-tag problems, and signs that the logic may have changed. When something looks wrong, it alerts. It does not actuate, and it cannot change machine state. That boundary is deliberate. Operators stay in control. Enhance, don't replace We're not chasing a fully autonomous plant. The principle behind AetherMIP is simple: AI should make skilled people faster, not take them out of the loop. Human and AI improve together, and the plant gets the benefit. AetherMIP gives a technician the right page, the right tag, and the right history at the moment of need. The person still makes the call. Why one machine first We're not trying to be your plant-wide AI platform. AetherMIP Core is a bolt-on for one machine: one diode path, one document set, one live tag map, and one team that owns that asset. Start where downtime hurts most. Prove it with real faults and real diagnosis times. Then decide what scales. It's also the easiest thing to put in front of an OT security review: one machine, one one-way path, and a clear list of what the system cannot do. AetherMIP Core works with the modern controllers plants already run, including Allen-Bradley ControlLogix and CompactLogix, Siemens S7-1200/1500, Schneider Modicon M580/M340, and Omron NJ/NX. That makes it a practical fit for brownfield PLC machines already on your floor. Built by a machine builder Marando Industries has designed, built, and integrated custom machines, robotic cells, and controls in Reading, PA for about 20 years, as one continuous company since 2006. PLCs and control networks are home turf for us. AetherMIP didn't start as a slide deck. A live prototype runs on our own floor, next to real iron. If you've seen our Press 3 video, that's the one. Planning a new machine or cell? AetherMIP can be specified from day one as part of an intelligent custom machine. For OT and security teams If your first question is "can this ever touch the PLC?", that's the right question. Ask us to show you the hardware. The Security & Isolation white paper on the AetherMIP page covers the architecture, the diode, Integrity Watch, and the system's explicit limitations. For customers who need extra assurance, we're open to independent lab testing of the one-way behavior. Request a private demo (under NDA on request) or join the beta interest list at marando-inc.com/aethermip. A Marando engineer, not a sales bot, will follow up. Intelligence without exposure.