ItalyManufacturing2026 – ongoingOiki Acciai Inossidabili
AI agent for processing email orders and managing bids
Oiki cut order processing time from 30 to 12 minutes with an AI agent that reads email orders
Problem
Oiki, a stainless steel producer and distributor in Parma, received customer orders by email. Staff had to read each one, find product codes and quantities, and enter them by hand. Bid management also took up much of the working day.
Approach
IBM Business Partner BlueIT built the solution on IBM watsonx.ai. An IBM Granite model extracts product codes and quantities from email orders. A watsonx Orchestrate agent interprets the request, checks the data and triggers the next steps in the ERP system. Staff reach it through Microsoft Teams.
Results
Takeaway
The gains came from a narrow, repetitive task: reading orders and bids that arrive as free text. Oiki expected further gains as the ERP integration advanced.
Categories
- Industry
- Manufacturing
- Business function
- Production and qualityMarketing and sales
- Innovation type
- Process innovation
- AI technology
- Generative AIAI agents
- Adoption
- Vendor solution
- Evidence
- Vendor case study
Sources
Source summaries
IBM describes how the Italian stainless steel company Oiki used a Granite model and a watsonx Orchestrate agent, built by partner BlueIT, to process email orders. Average order handling fell from 30 to 12 minutes.
Full details are in the original sources.
