Agentic AI Rewrites Factory Data Architecture Requirements

Agentic AI transforms factory data consumption from tens of consumers to thousands, creating a roughly 100x increase in edge-based data consumers. Traditional ISA-95 layered architectures — designed for 10–50 downstream systems — cannot scale to deliver the contextualized, cross-system inputs that goal-oriented agents need. Practitioners must plan for hub-and-spoke integration, contextualization layers, and governance: agents perform best when given a small, curated toolset (typically 5–10 MCP tools) rather than broad, unmanaged access. IDC adoption signals (56.6% of industrial organizations in planning/pilot stages) mean this is an immediate operational challenge, not a distant research problem.