GhostState
Know what every machine is doing without asking anyone to update anything.
- Category
- Production visibility
- Model
- Hardware + SaaS
- Core platform
- ALIA Signal Engine
- Status
- IN DEVELOPMENT
01 Problem
Machine shops and small manufacturers run without a live picture of their own floor. Owners find out about downtime, stalled jobs and idle machines at the end of the shift, if at all.
Every tracking system these shops have tried collapses for the same reason: it asks operators to scan, type or click. The cost is quoted lead times nobody trusts and capacity decisions made on guesses.
02 Specification
This is the specification we are building toward. The status column shows what exists today.
- Passive machine-state inferencePROTOTYPE
The system infers whether each machine is running, idle, in setup or faulted from its electrical signature, with no input from the operator.
PROTOTYPE - Job and WIP trackingIN PROGRESS
Cycle patterns are matched against released jobs so work in progress is tracked without barcodes or data entry.
IN PROGRESS - Stall and downtime detectionIN PROGRESS
Stalls, unplanned stops and slow cycles are flagged as they happen instead of being discovered at the end of the shift.
IN PROGRESS - Utilization analyticsPLANNED
True running time and value-adding time are reported per machine, per shift and per job.
PLANNED - Cycle-time baselinesPLANNED
The system learns a baseline cycle time for each part and machine pairing and surfaces drift against it.
PLANNED - Shift and job reportingPLANNED
Supervisors get a plain report of what each machine produced during a shift without asking anyone.
PLANNED - Capacity predictionPLANNED
Historical state data feeds a forward view of available capacity for quoting and for promising dates.
PLANNED - Scheduling integrationPLANNED
Live machine state feeds SequenceAnvil so the schedule reflects the floor as it is, not as it was planned.
PLANNED - Offline edge deploymentPLANNED
All inference runs on an edge device inside the shop and keeps working when the internet connection does not.
PLANNED - Multi-site viewPLANNED
Operations with more than one building see every machine across sites in a single view.
PLANNED
Updated as capabilities ship. BUILT means working and validated; nothing gets that label early.
03 System
- 01Current clamps and sensors
- 02Edge signature processing
- 03Machine-state model
- 04WIP and utilization view
- 05Scheduling integration
04 Engineering
Signal platform
GhostState is built on the ALIA Signal Engine, our shared platform for turning raw sensor streams into operational state. The engine normalizes electrical waveforms across dissimilar machines, extracts features that survive shop-floor electrical noise, and feeds state-estimation and anomaly models tuned per machine class. Each installation refines its own models against the machines it actually watches.
Deployment model
Everything runs edge-first on a device inside the shop. Signature processing and state inference happen on site, the system keeps working through internet outages, and raw electrical data never leaves the building. Only derived state and reports sync out, and a fully on-prem configuration is part of the design.
Integration surface
The system installs with current clamps at the electrical panel, so no machine is opened and no control is touched. Job lists arrive from spreadsheets or ERP exports, and derived machine state is designed to feed SequenceAnvil and plant systems over standard interfaces.
05 Why this is hard
The genuine problem is reconstructing machine state from noisy electrical signatures across dissimilar machines without labeled training data for each one. A decades-old mill, a modern lathe and a press brake produce signatures that share almost nothing, and no shop will pause production to label months of data. The engineering work is models that transfer across machine classes and calibrate themselves from unlabeled everyday operation.
06 Design constraints
- No operator data entry, ever
- Works offline; never goes blind with the internet
- No PLC or control-system access required
- Raw electrical data never leaves the site
- Installs without opening a machine
07 Design partner program
Design partner program.
We are looking for a small number of design and pilot partners. A partner gets the problem solved for their operation first, direct influence on the specification above, and pilot pricing. In exchange we get reality: real constraints, real data, real operators. No external partner is engaged on this product yet.