01Use cases

Problems shaped
like this.

Written as problem statements and the approach we would take, not as customer claims. Each one carries what a conventionally staffed team takes to develop and deploy it, against what the agents take, and what set the pace in each case. If one of these is your problem, the intake conversation starts from here.

How to read these

Each lists the constraints that would drive its complexity tier. Those four - compliance, deployment target, scale and latency, are the same signals ChiefManager extracts from a conversation and prices against.

16 of 16
Vision systemsManufacturing

Surface defect inspection that keeps up with the line

Defect classes are known, but inspection is manual, inconsistent between shifts, and slows the line whenever it is taken seriously.

What it costs today

Escapes reach customers. Scrap is discovered a shift late, when the whole batch is already wrong.

Staffed team24 weeks
With the agents12 days
93%
Approach
  • Train on the defect images you have already labelled
  • Run inference on an edge device at the line, not in a datacentre
  • Emit pass/fail to the MES so the line can act without a human in the loop
  • Retrain from new defect classes without a vendor engagement
Constraints that price it
Edge inferenceLine-rate latencyOffline capableMES integration
What set the pace

Camera placement and calibration per line, done on site.

Data & analyticsManufacturing

Machine downtime predicted before it stops the line

Sensor history exists across PLCs and historians, but nobody has turned it into a warning anyone acts on.

What it costs today

Unplanned downtime is discovered when the line stops. Maintenance runs on a calendar, not on condition.

Staffed team22 weeks
With the agents6 days
96%
Approach
  • Ingest historian and PLC telemetry into one time-series store
  • Model failure signatures per asset class rather than one global model
  • Raise work orders into the CMMS with the evidence attached
  • Track prediction quality against what actually failed
Constraints that price it
On-premiseOT/IT boundaryNo cloud egressCMMS integration
What set the pace

Historian data was already centralised, so nothing waited on plant access.

Vision systemsManufacturing

Changeover and OEE loss nobody can currently attribute

OEE is reported weekly from manual logs, so the losses are known in aggregate and never at the point they happened.

What it costs today

Improvement projects are argued from anecdote. The same changeover loses the same twenty minutes every week.

Staffed team18 weeks
With the agents8 days
94%
Approach
  • Derive state, running, idle, changeover, blocked, from existing cameras
  • Attribute every minute of loss to a cause and a station
  • Publish OEE that reconciles to what the line actually did
Constraints that price it
Existing camerasNo PLC changesShop-floor display
What set the pace

Line-side cameras to mount, but one cell proves the approach before the rest.

Vision systemsIndustrial safety

PPE and restricted-zone compliance across multiple sites

Cameras record everything and surface nothing. Breaches are found in review, after someone was already exposed.

What it costs today

Near-misses go unrecorded until one is not a near-miss. Audit evidence is assembled by hand after the fact.

Staffed team26 weeks
With the agents22 days
88%
Approach
  • Ingest existing RTSP streams without replacing hardware
  • Detect zone entry, unsafe proximity, missing PPE and falls
  • Push events into the incident system already in use
  • Retain the evidence clip against each finding for audit
Constraints that price it
On-premiseAir-gappedSub-second alertingEvidence retention
What set the pace

Air-gapped, one building at a time, commissioned by someone physically there. The least compressible shape there is.

Workflow automationLogistics

Goods-in reconciliation that stops paying for what never arrived

Delivery notes, purchase orders and what physically arrived are reconciled by a person comparing three screens.

What it costs today

Short deliveries are paid for. Disputes are unwinnable weeks later because nobody photographed the pallet.

Staffed team16 weeks
With the agents4 days
96%
Approach
  • Read delivery documents at the dock, whatever format they arrive in
  • Match against the PO and flag only the exceptions
  • Capture dock imagery as evidence attached to the discrepancy
Constraints that price it
Document variabilityERP integrationAudit trail
What set the pace

Reads documents the supplier already sends; the ERP write is a single endpoint.

Vision systemsLogistics

Yard and asset visibility without hand-counting

Nobody can say what is in the yard right now without someone walking it with a clipboard.

What it costs today

Assets are hired to replace assets already on site. Dwell time is estimated, never measured.

Staffed team20 weeks
With the agents10 days
93%
Approach
  • Count and classify from fixed cameras and periodic drone passes
  • Track dwell time per asset and flag anything overdue
  • Expose a live count the yard team can actually trust
Constraints that price it
Outdoor conditionsWeather and lightingExisting cameras
What set the pace

Outdoor mounting and power, in weather, before anything can be tested.

Vision systemsEnergy & utilities

Grid and asset inspection footage nobody has time to watch

Drone and helicopter inspection footage accumulates faster than engineers can review it, so deterioration is caught late.

What it costs today

Faults are found on the next inspection cycle, or by an outage. Review capacity caps how often you can inspect.

Staffed team24 weeks
With the agents5 days
97%
Approach
  • Batch-process captured footage against known condition classes
  • Rank assets by severity so engineers review the worst first
  • Retain evidence frames and location against every finding
Constraints that price it
Batch processingGeospatial taggingExisting capture workflow
What set the pace

Runs against footage you have already collected. No site visit in the loop.

Vision systemsConstruction

Site progress and safety verified from what is actually there

Progress is self-reported by subcontractors and verified by a site walk, when someone has time to do one.

What it costs today

Claims are paid against progress that has not happened. Disputes are settled from photographs nobody organised.

Staffed team22 weeks
With the agents11 days
93%
Approach
  • Derive progress from fixed cameras and periodic captures
  • Verify claimed milestones against observed state
  • Flag safety violations as they happen rather than at review
Constraints that price it
Harsh site conditionsIntermittent connectivityEvidence retention
What set the pace

Site access is scheduled around the trades who are actually building.

Knowledge & retrievalTechnology

Engineering knowledge locked in the heads of four people

Design decisions are spread across wikis, tickets and a decade of documents. Finding them depends on knowing who to ask.

What it costs today

New engineers take months to become useful. The same architectural question is re-answered every quarter.

Staffed team14 weeks
With the agents3 days
97%
Approach
  • Connect the systems the answers already live in
  • Respect existing document permissions in retrieval, not just at display
  • Answer with a citation, or refuse
Constraints that price it
Permission-aware retrievalCitations mandatoryDeployed in your VPC
What set the pace

Existing repositories, cloud, no regulated data. Close to the ceiling.

Knowledge & retrievalFinancial services

Policy answers a supervisor can defend to a regulator

Regulatory and policy documents change constantly, and staff need answers that survive supervisory review.

What it costs today

Staff either guess or escalate. A confidently wrong answer from a generic assistant is a reportable event.

Staffed team18 weeks
With the agents9 days
93%
Approach
  • Version-aware ingestion so answers reflect policy as it stands today
  • Every response carries the clause it was drawn from
  • Refusal is the default when no supporting clause exists
  • Full query audit log, exportable for supervisory review
Constraints that price it
Refuses rather than guessesData residencyHuman review queueAudit export
What set the pace

The retrieval is quick; the compliance sign-off is on the reviewer’s calendar.

Workflow automationHealthcare

Clinical documentation burden that is driving attrition

Clinicians spend a large share of every shift on documentation that is necessary, repetitive and hated.

What it costs today

Documentation happens after hours. Coding accuracy suffers, and so does retention.

Staffed team28 weeks
With the agents18 days
91%
Approach
  • Draft structured documentation from the encounter record
  • Surface coding suggestions with the evidence for each
  • Clinician approves, nothing enters the record unreviewed
Constraints that price it
HIPAA / PHIOn-premiseHuman approval requiredFull audit trail
What set the pace

Clinical validation and a HIPAA review, both on cycles we do not control.

Knowledge & retrievalLegal & procurement

Contract obligations nobody is tracking after signature

Obligations, renewal dates and liability caps live in PDFs that were read once, at signing.

What it costs today

Auto-renewals are discovered after they renew. Obligations are breached because nobody knew they existed.

Staffed team16 weeks
With the agents3 days
97%
Approach
  • Extract obligations, dates and caps into a tracked register
  • Alert owners before a date matters, not after
  • Answer "what are we committed to" with the clause attached
Constraints that price it
Document variabilityConfidentialityCitations mandatory
What set the pace

Contracts are already digital and the obligations are extraction, not integration.

Knowledge & retrievalCustomer operations

Support volume that grows linearly with customers

Agents re-answer the same questions, and generic assistants produce confident answers that are wrong.

What it costs today

Headcount scales with growth. Deflection tools get switched off after the first bad answer reaches a customer.

Staffed team13 weeks
With the agents3 days
97%
Approach
  • Index resolved tickets alongside current documentation
  • Answer only where a supporting source exists
  • Escalate to a human when confidence is low, with the context attached
  • Expose deflection and quality metrics honestly
Constraints that price it
Refuses rather than guessesEscalation pathQuality metrics exposed
What set the pace

Ticket history exists, integrations are SaaS APIs, no compliance gate.

Workflow automationInsurance & finance

Claims and invoice processing done by people reading PDFs

Documents arrive in every format imaginable and are keyed into a system by hand.

What it costs today

Throughput is capped by headcount. Error rates rise at exactly the moment volume does.

Staffed team20 weeks
With the agents6 days
96%
Approach
  • Extract structured data whatever the format it arrives in
  • Route only genuine exceptions to a person
  • Reconcile against the source system and hold an audit trail
Constraints that price it
PII handlingException routingStraight-through rate reported
What set the pace

Formats were known and the finance system had a usable API.

Vision systemsRetail

Shrink and checkout loss visible only in the monthly count

Loss is measured at stocktake, months after the behaviour that caused it.

What it costs today

You know the number and never the cause. Interventions are guesses.

Staffed team18 weeks
With the agents8 days
94%
Approach
  • Detect the events that correlate with loss at the point they happen
  • Attribute to store, lane and time rather than to a monthly total
  • Feed the existing loss-prevention workflow, not a new one
Constraints that price it
Privacy by designExisting camerasMulti-site rollout
What set the pace

Store hardware, but the estate is uniform so one install pattern repeats.

Integration & platformCross-industry

Legacy systems that block every project that touches them

The system of record cannot be replaced and will not integrate, so every initiative routes around it.

What it costs today

Each project pays the same integration tax. Data is re-keyed between systems by people.

Staffed team32 weeks
With the agents11 days
95%
Approach
  • Wrap the legacy system in an API surface it never had
  • Reconcile continuously so both sides can be trusted
  • Migrate incrementally, with a rollback at every step
Constraints that price it
No downtimeReconciliation requiredIncremental cutover
What set the pace

Change windows on the system of record are weekly, so cutover waits twice.

Not listed? Bring it anyway.

ChiefManager classifies from what you describe, not from a menu. If it resolves to vision or retrieval, it can be scoped and priced.