Anthropic and Infor announced two related offerings Nov. 12 that connect the Claude AI assistant to manufacturing business systems. The announcements are aimed mainly at the enterprise and supply chain layer, but several of the described tasks touch plant operations.

Anthropic’s Claude for Manufacturing is a plugin with 17 skills covering sales, quality, operations, supply chain, design and setup. Some skills handle a single task, while others chain several steps and stop for human review.

One skill targets breakdown diagnosis. A technician can have Claude read sensor exports, repair notes, photos and equipment manuals, then rank likely causes for the technician to check. Another compiles production data into a report showing output against target, equipment downtime, and the cost of lost output. Other examples include investigating failed inspections and drafting corrective action reports, preparing requests for quotes, and comparing design variations in Autodesk Fusion.

The plugin works through connectors to Autodesk Fusion, Infor, Microsoft 365 and Oracle NetSuite. For systems without a connector, users can save regular exports to Microsoft 365, and Claude works from those files. Anthropic said the plugin does not operate equipment. The company is developing a research-preview Model Hardware Standard intended to give programmable equipment a common way to describe its measurements, settings and safety limits.

Infor’s offering, Infor Industry AI for Claude, adds the ability to act on records. With Infor’s plugin and connector, users can ask questions in plain language and, after review and approval, carry out actions in Infor. Examples include creating a purchase order, reallocating stock to an urgent order, shifting production lines after unplanned downtime and shipping an order. In one scenario, a production planner asks why an order is at risk, sees whether the cause is a material shortage, limited machine capacity or a labor shortage, and starts corrective action from Claude. Infor’s customer base spans discrete and process manufacturing, distribution and services.

Both companies stressed governance. Infor said single sign-on and role-based entitlements from existing Infor permissions determine what each person can see and do, and that actions taken through the connector are subject to authorization controls and recorded in Infor. Anthropic said its skills are built to end with a user’s review, and that Claude can link figures and claims back to underlying data and documents. The Infor connector is built on the open Model Context Protocol standard.

Anthropic cited a 2025 Manufacturing Leadership Council survey in which 79% of manufacturers said they enter data manually. Jessica Vincent, vice president of business solutions at Oldcastle APG, said the ability to ask questions in the interface where employees already work is an immediate productivity gain.