Midwest Wheel Builds Toward AI Agents That Fix Problems, Tied to One Infor System
Midwest Wheel Companies is working toward agentic AI that can fix operational problems, not just flag them, while tying new capabilities to a single Infor system, Senior Vice President Steve McEnany said at Infor Velocity Week. The century-old truck parts distributor has added AI features for order entry and invoice processing, with human oversight for cash-related tasks.
McEnany spoke with theCUBE Research’s Christophe Bertrand and co-host Alison Kosik at Infor Velocity Week, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed agentic AI governance, Midwest Wheel’s single-system approach and how AI fits into its daily operations.
Infor (US) LLC is embedding industry-specific AI agents into its applications as businesses move AI into day-to-day operations. Midwest Wheel’s move to the cloud took server management and software updates off its lean IT team, freeing the company to build in-demand tools in just a few weeks, McEnany said. The cloud migration also added AI features, including a product recommender in order entry and automation that scans emailed PDF invoices into the system.
“I don’t want to just know that there’s a problem; I want it to fix the problem,” McEnany said. “That agentic AI, agentic future, having the agent have the rules of how we want to do things and then have it say, ‘This is what we would always do for this. Let’s just fix it.’”
A human should stay in the loop for anything that touches cash or accounts, according to McEnany. He also recalled a time when a second AI tool spotted that a companywide sales report card, built with AI, didn’t add up. “There is governance that has to happen. You can’t assume the data’s going to be right,” he said. “The prompts have to be written correctly.”
Infor argues that industry context is part of the fix, pointing to research showing that off-the-shelf AI falls short for two out of three businesses. McEnany said he believes in sticking with one foundation. “If you’ve got one place to start, even if we do reach out and bring in a third-party tool, we still want to tie it back to the Infor system because we want one point of reference,” he said.
Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Infor Velocity Week. Neither Infor, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.