Itasca, Illinois, 5 August 2026 – Ultimo, the AI-augmented enterprise asset management (EAM) software company, today announced that Steenland Chocolate, the world's leading manufacturer of customized chocolate coins and medallions, is among the first food and beverage producers to deploy its AI digital workers. The deployment automates maintenance planning workflows and surfaces historical repair knowledge at the point of work - giving technicians faster, smarter guidance on the production floor.
Unplanned equipment failures cost Global 2000 companies $600 billion annually - a figure that has surged 50 percent in just two years, according to research by Splunk and Oxford Economics. For food producers specifically, the consequences of a line stoppage extend beyond lost output: ingredients spoil, compliance records fall behind and missed delivery windows can cost customer contracts. Industry research estimates 82 percent of food manufacturers have experienced unplanned downtime in the past three years, and the financial toll is severe. According to ABB, the average per-hour cost of unplanned downtime across industrial sectors now stands at $169,889, with food and beverage operations particularly exposed given that a single incident requiring cleanup can consume up to 12 hours of lost production.
Ultimo's maintenance planning functionality integrates directly with work order data, asset records, and shift logs to generate smarter maintenance schedules, flag recurring failure patterns, and democratize the historical repair knowledge that experienced technicians carry with them when they retire. It can be deployed independently of the Ultimo EAM platform, meaning food and beverage operations can benefit from AI-assisted maintenance management across every site in their organization. Every action is audit-logged. The maintenance team remains in control.
Steenland Chocolate, which exports to more than 50 countries and operates precision production lines for customized chocolate products, deployed digital workers to improve maintenance quality and protect institutional knowledge. "With AI functionalities in Ultimo, we improve the quality of our work: failure reports are more accurate, work orders are smarter, and maintenance knowledge is better secured within Ultimo. Data quality and human involvement remain essential," said Kevin Brusselaars, Manager Projects, and Technical Services at Steenland Chocolate.
"Food and beverage manufacturers operate under intense pressure to keep lines running, stay compliant, and maintain quality across complex production environments,” added Steven Elsham, CEO at Ultimo. “At the same time, the workforce carrying decades of maintenance knowledge is retiring. What our digital workers do is capture that knowledge and make it available at the right moment - so maintenance teams can make better decisions faster, whether they have twenty years of experience or two. These early deployments show what that looks like in practice."
The maintenance planning AI is part of a broader suite launched by Ultimo, alongside digital workers covering health, safety and environment (HSE) compliance, technician guidance, and natural-language reporting. Each agent operates on unified asset data and requires no model training or separate AI infrastructure. These digital workers learn as they go, becoming more capable with every task. They are the first of an expanding line-up of digital workers Ultimo will introduce in the months ahead. Details will be announced at ultimo.com.
