Itasca, Illinois, 14 July 2026 – Ultimo today released results from the first commercial deployments of its health, safety & environment (HSE) digital worker, an AI agent built for industrial safety teams. Across a controlled trial group of manufacturing businesses, the agent did not miss a single recommended safety action - a result that matters in a sector where the International Labour Organization estimates1 nearly three million workers die from work-related accidents and diseases every year, and a further 395 million sustain non-fatal injuries.
The HSE digital worker continuously monitors work orders and shift logs. It surfaces recommended safety actions before they become incidents, handles compliance reporting automatically, and flags conditions that warrant attention from safety teams - without replacing the professionals who act on them. Every recommendation is audit-logged. The human makes the final call. The agent can be purchased and operated independently of the Ultimo EAM platform, giving industrial organizations a direct route to benefit from AI-assisted safety management across every site in their organization.
Agristo, a major European potato processor, was among the first to deploy the digital worker in production. "Ultimo's AI suggests our HSE actions. Reliable, smart, and to date not a single measure has missed the mark," said Piet Gabriël, Group Maintenance Engineer at Agristo.
The pattern held across the trial group. AI-generated safety recommendations were acted on, compliance workflows that previously required manual review were automated, and safety teams redirected time toward analysis and prevention rather than administration.
"Industrial safety teams are being asked to track more hazards, across more assets, with the same headcount,” added Steven Elsham, CEO of Ultimo. "The regulatory environment is tightening, and the consequences of a missed action are severe. In hazardous industrial environments, that pressure falls on skilled people who should be focused on the complex, high-stakes decisions that only they can make - not on routine monitoring and compliance administration. What we have built handles that load automatically, so the humans who work in these environments can direct their expertise where it counts. These early results validate the approach, and we are moving quickly to put it in the hands of more customers."
The HSE digital worker is part of a broader suite from Ultimo covering maintenance planning, technician guidance, and natural-language reporting. Each agent can be deployed independently or alongside the Ultimo EAM platform. These agents don't stand still - the HSE digital worker learns continuously from every work order, shift log, and safety action it handles, growing sharper and more capable over time. It is the first of an expanding line-up of Ultimo digital workers, with more scheduled to join across maintenance, operations, and safety through 2026 and beyond. Details will be announced at www.ultimo.com.
Ultimo is a 2025 Gartner Customers' Choice award winner (4.7/5, 90 percent recommend) and a Verdantix Green Quadrant Leader for EAM software for two consecutive years. The company supports more than 150,000 technicians managing over 22 million assets across 2,500-plus customers in manufacturing, logistics, energy & utilities, and healthcare worldwide.
