EU AI Act Compliance: From Zero Governance to Assessment-Ready
How an industrial manufacturer can move from fragmented AI oversight to an assessment-ready governance system before the 2 December 2027 obligations
Operating context
An industrial manufacturer context with AI systems distributed across plants, an incomplete inventory and one or more likely high-risk systems requiring assessment-ready controls.
Size: Representative: 1,000–20,000-employee industrial manufacturers
The Challenge
Reach a defensible EU AI Act position for AI systems across plants — inventory, risk classification and assessment-ready documentation — before the 2 December 2027 obligations bite.
An indicative portfolio: dozens of AI systems across plants — visual quality inspection, predictive maintenance, production scheduling, worker-safety monitoring — with no central inventory
A worker-safety monitoring system likely lands in Annex III high-risk territory and lacks the required risk-management documentation
Vision inspection models retrained by line engineers with no change-control or logging of the kind Article 12 requires
A predictive-maintenance vendor cannot produce the technical documentation the Act requires of providers
Human-oversight arrangements (Article 14) exist in practice on the line but are documented nowhere
The board wants a defensible answer before the 2 December 2027 enforcement date
My Solution
A representative engagement would run end-to-end — from system inventory through technical measures, documentation, and ongoing monitoring — sized to an industrial plant portfolio.
The engagement would start with complete AI system discovery and risk classification, implement the required technical measures (bias testing, explainability, human oversight) and compliant documentation for each high-risk system, and establish an AI governance office with clear roles, processes, and audit trails.
Implementation Phases
Discovery & Classification
Complete AI system inventory across all business units. Risk classification per Annex III. In the modelled portfolio, 12 high-risk systems are prioritised.
3 weeksTechnical Measures Implementation
Logging and change-control for retrained vision models, explainability where the Act requires it, and documented human-oversight workflows for the line.
5 weeksDocumentation & Governance
Technical documentation per Annex IV, an AI risk-management system, and a model registry with automatic documentation.
3 weeksAudit Preparation & Training
A mock audit with external counsel, and training for the AI governance team on ongoing compliance.
2 weeksTechnologies & Approaches
Designed outcome
The intended outcome is a classified inventory, per-system remediation plans and governance a demanding auditor can follow, owned by the manufacturer's team.
Services in a Representative Engagement
Facing a Situation Like This?
Every engagement starts with a 30-minute diagnosis. Describe your situation, and I will tell you — honestly — whether I can help and how fast.