Katana is a cloud manufacturing platform for small and growing makers: food and drink producers, furniture workshops, cosmetics brands and contract manufacturers. It manages recipes or bills of materials, manufacturing orders and their operations, materials and products in stock, and the purchase orders that refill them.
Production planning in Katana is visual and quick, but it does not know when a machine is due for maintenance or about to fail. That information lives in a separate CMMS or in someone's head. An AI agent connected through Agentic CMMS can read both and answer the questions that sit between them: what can we make this week, what is missing, and when can the mixer come down for service.
What your AI agent can do with Katana
- See blocked orders. "Which manufacturing orders this week are waiting for materials, and what is missing?"
- Check material stock. "How much stainless steel sheet do we have, and how much is committed to open orders?"
- Read a recipe. "What materials and operations are in the bill of materials for the oak dining table?"
- Follow a purchase order. "When is the glass bottle delivery from Brightwell due?"
- Order materials. "Create a purchase order to Hearth Timber for 40 metres of oak board."
- Find the bottleneck. "Which operation has the most hours scheduled next week, and on which resource?"
- Track spare parts too. "Do we still have a spare blade for the CNC router in stock?"
Katana with your other systems
Production and maintenance compete for the same machines. These connections put both on the table.
- Find the gap between manufacturing orders in Katana to schedule a preventive job from MaintainX or Limble CMMS.
- When Augury reports rising vibration on a mixer, list the Katana orders that depend on it this week.
- Compare material costs in Katana with supplier bills in QuickBooks Online or Xero.
For makers with one of everything
A small manufacturer often has one mixer, one oven or one CNC machine. If it stops, everything stops. The agent helps you plan service when production allows it and keep the critical spare on the shelf, instead of finding out on the day an order is due.
It works the other way too. When a maintenance job overruns, ask the agent which manufacturing orders are affected and which materials are already committed to them, so the production planner can reschedule before customers notice. Spare parts for your machines can live in Katana as well, so the same reorder rules protect a critical blade or seal.
Each person approves their own agent with read-only or read and write access. Owners and admins choose which roles may use each Katana tool, and every call is written to the activity log.