Arch Systems, a provider of factory intelligence solutions for manufacturers, and HARMAN, the automotive technology leader and a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., announced that their joint initiative, “Scaling Factory Intelligence with Agentic AI,” has been named a finalist for the 2026 Automotive News PACE Award.
The solution transforms real-time manufacturing data into guided operational decisions across HARMAN’s global electronics manufacturing network, enabling manufacturing expertise, operational best practices, and continuous improvement to scale consistently across production sites.
“HARMAN is the exceptional rare company that not only pushes early on technology but also partners end to end for adoption and scale,” said Andrew Scheuermann Arch Systems CEO. “We started outlining the principles of an agentic system several years back when most were asking ‘what is ChatGPT’. Now embedding AI into the right real time workflows, the usage at the site is phenomenal.”
Beginning with a lighthouse deployment at HARMAN’s Suzhou, China facility, HARMAN implemented the Arch Factory Intelligence Platform to connect real-time machine and production data with prioritized alerts, guided workflows, and role-based actions. Capabilities validated at Suzhou are now being standardized and deployed across additional sites, enabling more consistent execution, comparable performance metrics, and scalable continuous improvement across regions.
The initiative has delivered measurable improvements across multiple manufacturing sites, including approximately 30% growth in total placements across four sites, a 37% improvement in Defects Per Million Units (DPMU), and a 6 to 8 percentage-point improvement in Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), while helping HARMAN improve utilization of existing capacity without adding new production lines.
“This collaboration has helped us transform factory intelligence from isolated site improvements into a scalable capability across our global manufacturing network,” said Daniel Jonas, Global Head of Automotive Manufacturing at HARMAN. “By making manufacturing expertise and operational best practices available across facilities, we’re improving execution, accelerating continuous improvement and creating a stronger foundation for AI-driven manufacturing. We’re honored to be recognized alongside Arch Systems as a finalist for the 2026 Automotive News PACE Award.”
Innovation Highlights
The joint submission highlights HARMAN’s enterprise-scale deployment of factory intelligence and purpose-built agentic AI workflows that transform real-time manufacturing data into prioritized alerts and guided actions. By extending capabilities first validated at the Suzhou facility to additional manufacturing sites, HARMAN can standardize best practices, improve operational consistency and accelerate continuous improvement across regions.
“HARMAN set out to do more than collect manufacturing data. Together, we’ve helped turn real-time factory data into guided operational execution that scales across a global manufacturing network,” said Andrew Scheuermann, CEO and Co-founder, Arch Systems. “We’re proud to partner with HARMAN, and honored that our collaboration on Scaling Factory Intelligence with Agentic AI is recognized by the Automotive News PACE Awards.”
Winners will be announced Nov. 17, 2026, at the Automotive News PACE Awards ceremony during the MEMA Conference in Metro Detroit.
About Arch Systems
Arch Systems is a manufacturing intelligence platform that combines a governed manufacturing data foundation with autonomous AI in a single platform. Arch unifies fragmented factory data, including equipment, MES, and enterprise systems, into trusted operational context, then puts trained expert manufacturing AI agents on top of it to investigate, reason, and act across quality, planning, and operations. The result is expert-level decision-making that scales across every line and site, without infrastructure overhauls or multi-year transformation projects. Manufacturers see measurable results in weeks rather than years: less downtime, higher quality, and greater efficiency.
About HARMAN
HARMAN is a global leader in Lifestyle Audio and Automotive technology. We create intelligent experiences that enrich people’s lives on the road, in their homes, on the stage, and everywhere in between. Our iconic audio brands — including JBL®, Harman Kardon®, AKG®, Bowers & Wilkins®, Denon®, and Marantz® — bring premium sound to consumers and audio/visual professionals worldwide. More than 50 million vehicles globally rely on HARMAN’s technologies to deliver safer, smarter, and more intuitive in-cabin experiences. A wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., HARMAN has approximately 26,000 employees around the world.
