As published on The Manufacturing Connection by Gary Mintchell
"...I thought I detected the seeds of an answer to problems I had working in engineering data management in the late 70s. So, I consented to an interview (I do few of these anymore) with Foundation EGI co-founder Wojciech Matusik, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT.
This decision was one of my best lately. Matusik laid out a coherent, logical, precise definition of what this company (that launched last week) defines as the problem and the solution it intends.
These are my words—I see what they are doing as the crucial step between PLM and MES. That’s a bit to crude, but bear with me.
Early in my career, the VP of Product Development for a manufacturing company picked me for the role of data manager. From the foundation of managing the bills of materials and specifications generated by product design communicating with other departments such as manufacturing operations, cost accounting, and purchasing. These placed me at the center of cost control and reduction efforts (Hello, Elon, I could have helped you do a better job!).
Matusik began with the premise that engineering is programming, that is, it generates a set of rules in a domain-specific language. Look at assembly, for example, it is a small set of operations from a small domain. From this, one could construct a domain-specific program for any set of tasks. (I call this workflow—something I’ve seen MES developers trying to perfect for more than a decade.)
A coding assistant would be a great help developing these task programs. AI helps today’s software engineering become more efficient. Why not use the same tools for this problem? Enter Foundation EGI. Natural language programming of these “rules” for building from the engineering design data.
- Construct domain
- Program compilers
- Data Sets
- Then use LLMs and so forth
They are building a platform. Engineering change notices built-in. Focus on the most boring of engineer’s work, leave to the engineer the most creative. They hate the add-on administrative work. They integrate with a variety of CAD files and works either with PLM or not. Also fits well with robotics with automated coding assistant.
Like I have told a few founders whom I’ve interviewed, I am enthusiastic about the potential of your platform—I’m interested in seeing how the technology actually works out."
Read more here: https://themanufacturingconnection.com/2025/04/foundation-engineering-general-intelligence-egi-launched/