The KTPO facility demonstrates how industrial automation can be enhanced with AI. Source: KUKA Group
KUKA AG this week said it has successfully deployed its Automation Management Platform, or AMP, at the KUKA Toledo Production Operations in Ohio.
AMP combines proven industrial automation and AI-driven decision-making to enable manufacturers to increase operational flexibility, enhance productivity, and unlock greater value from production data, said the company. The open orchestration platform is now supporting production operations, connecting existing automation infrastructure with next-generation AI-powered technologies.
“With the launch of AMP, manufacturing is entering a new era,” said Marc Fleischmann, chief software and AI officer at KUKA Group. “Traditional automation is expanding and transforming, and the future lies in the combination of precision and reliability of proven industrial automation with the capabilities of AI-powered systems. KUKA AMP provides the foundation for that next step.”
KTPO serves major automakers
KUKA Toledo Production Operations (KTPO) is one of North America’s major automotive manufacturing facilities, according to the wholly owned subsidiary of KUKA Systems North America LLC.
The 335,000-sq.-ft. (31,122.5-sq.-m) factory makes more than 300 vehicle bodies per day, about one every two minutes. KTPO has produced a total of over 2 million vehicle bodies, generating vast amounts of production data.
Since 2006, KTPO has produced the body-in-white for every Jeep Wrangler sold worldwide and, since 2019, for the Jeep Gladiator. KUKA said the highly automated facility relies on its expertise in welding, joining technologies, and systems integration. The production environment uses 285 robots and more than 60,000 connected devices.
KUKA said the AMP implementation follows its plan to bring AI out of pilots to real-world manufacturing at scale. The company noted that the U.S. is a significant market and home to more than 3,400 employees across engineering, manufacturing, software development, systems integration, and customer support functions.
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“Physical AI will drive the next major leap forward into a new generation of intelligent technologies that enable machines and robots to better understand their environment, learn continuously from operational data, and make increasingly informed decisions in real time,” said KUKA.
It announced AMP, which initially focuses on autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), at NVIDIA GTC 2026.
While factories generate large amounts of data, but much of it has been stuck in isolated systems, the company asserted. AMP helps customers transform this information into actionable insights, allowing automation systems to better understand production processes, coordinate activities across workflows, and continuously improve performance, it said.
“KUKA AMP creates a scalable foundation for physical AI,” said Fleischmann. “It provides an automation platform that lets customers integrate their own AI models and generalize them in production with a shared context layer. By continuously collecting and analyzing operational data, it creates a closed-loop system that can improve performance over time and helps organizations scale intelligent automation.”
“Physical AI should not be viewed as a disruption, but as the next evolution of industrial automation,” Fleischmann added. “Manufacturers want a practical path forward that builds on decades of investment. KUKA AMP is being developed in the United States and provides that path by connecting and gradually augmenting today’s factory with the autonomous factory of tomorrow.”
KUKA AMP is designed as an open, modular API platform and initially focuses on AMRs. Source: KUKA
KUKA wants to help manufacturers modernize
The KTPO facility will demonstrate how established industrial automation can be enhanced with AI.
“Testing the alpha version of KUKA AMP at KTPO is an important step forward,” said Fleischmann. “KTPO is a familiar environment for us, so we can focus on evaluating the platform under realistic conditions and accelerate improvements that will help deliver the best possible experience for our users.”
Marc Fleischmann, an experienced software and cloud expert from Silicon Valley, is KUKA Group’s chief software and AI officer.
The goal is to help manufacturers drive higher efficiency through more comprehensive automation without replacing existing assets, said KUKA.
By connecting mobile robots, machines, software, and data sources, AMP will enable companies to automate more complex processes, increase operational flexibility, reduce changeover times, and unlock greater value from existing factory data.
KUKA also provides service, training, and support, including system engineering and simulation, spare parts, and robot refurbishment, through the my.KUKA.com site.
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