Wayne State University in Detroit and Kyndryl, a provider of enterprise technology services in New York, have announced a multi-year collaboration to establish the IntelliMake research hub and pilot-scale factory within the James and Patricia Anderson College of Engineering.
Through the collaboration, Wayne State and Kyndryl will co-develop and demonstrate intelligent and agentic AI manufacturing technologies on campus, host joint workshops on AI, cybersecurity, and digital twins, and create demonstration pods at the IntelliMake lab.
According to Kyndryl’s 2025 Readiness Report, 87 percent of leaders expect AI to reshape jobs within a year, yet only 29 percent feel their workforce is ready.
Building on Kyndryl’s launch of organizational change management services and enhanced Kyndryl Agentic AI Framework, Wayne State and Kyndryl will train teams in agentic AI for manufacturing through hands-on experience and demonstrate customer challenges in the lab to showcase the real-world solutions Kyndryl can develop beyond prototypes and decks.
“As an R1 university located in manufacturing heartland with strong industry ties, Wayne State is uniquely positioned to tackle the nation’s manufacturing and workforce challenges,” says Ali Abolmaali, dean of the James and Patricia Anderson College of Engineering. “IntelliMake exemplifies our commitment to advancing AI, automation, and education — while preparing engineers for the factories of the future.”
IntelliMake’s mission is to position Detroit and Michigan at the forefront of the nation’s projected $10 trillion smart manufacturing opportunity, where AI agents, robotics, and digital twins drive self-optimizing and reconfigurable factories.
“Despite significant advances in automation, many manufacturing operations remain rigid, siloed and reactive,” says Onofrio Pirrotta, senior vice president and managing director of Kyndryl. “Through our collaboration with Wayne State on IntelliMake, we are working to replace brittle, fixed automation with resilient, people-centered innovation by combining people, process, and technology in one integrated environment.
“This will also give customers a hands-on view of what’s possible by investing in and training the next generation of AI talent to lead the transformation.”
In its first phase, IntelliMake will combine advanced computing with modular orchestration to demonstrate how intelligent agents can detect, adapt to, and recover from disruptions. The autonomous manufacturing and assembly line will reduce scrap and rework, improve quality, and empower workers with more responsive tools and real-time insights.
Kyndryl will help orchestrate these systems by integrating technologies like Kyndryl Bridge for monitoring and management of the end-to-end infrastructure that will run the mock assembly line.
The collaboration was made possible through coordination among Wayne State’s James and Patricia Anderson College of Engineering, the Office of the Provost, the Division of Research and Innovation, Sponsored Programs Administration, and the Industry Partnerships Office to advance university-wide innovation and help IntelliMake’s discoveries translate into scalable industrial applications.
For more information, visit kyndryl.com.
