Customer story · Defense manufacturing

A DoD manufacturer put private AI to work across the company, and cut sales-team time on RFQs by 92%.

A Tier 2 defense electronics manufacturer supplying the industry's largest contractors built one private platform with nBrain, across finance, the factory floor, and engineering and sales, in one of the most security-restricted industries there is.

Client names available upon request.

92%
less sales-team time spent on RFQs
Engineering and sales
6months
from a scope document to a private platform used across the company
Finance, floor, engineering
Week 9
first module live on real work
Invoices
All
employees with access, each by role
Company-wide since September
01The challenge

The knowledge that ran the business lived in people.

Like most manufacturers, the company ran on what a handful of experienced people knew: how a customer drawing is really read, which part a customer really means, which jobs can actually start today. A shared mailbox was the real system of record for invoices, and customer parts lists were decoded line by line, by hand.

Export controls (ITAR) and the Defense Department's cybersecurity standard for contractors (CMMC) limit where the company's data can live, who can see it, and which tools can touch it. Public AI tools and off-the-shelf copilots are off the table. One wrong upload can be a compliance violation.

02What we built

Start where the pain is loud and the data is clean, then take on harder work.

Invoices, from mailbox to done

Bills are pulled out of the shared mailbox, matched, and queued. A person approves every one.

Live since May

Clear-to-build on the factory floor

Each morning, supervisors see which jobs have every part on hand and can run today, and what is blocking the rest.

Live since August

Drawing and parts-list decoder

Customer drawings and parts lists turned into the right, orderable parts, to support the quote and the bid decision.

Live since September

An assistant for the whole company

Ask about the operation in plain English. It only sees what your role is allowed to see.

Rolling out

Training and know-how

What the experts know, captured so the next hire learns from the last expert.

Rolling out

Every piece was designed with the person who does the job, at their desk.

03How it's governed

Built to the company's security rules from the first week.

The company's CEO, IT lead, and operations leadership set the security rules and the decision rights. nBrain designed the platform around them.

The constraint
What most companies do
What we built
Where the data lives
Ban AI, or look the other way while people paste work into public tools.
A private platform, owned by the company, in a U.S. government-grade cloud.
Who can see it
One shared tool with the same view for everyone.
Access by role through company sign-in, checked on every request, with changes logged.
Which tools touch it
Consumer chatbots outside the security boundary.
Company data never trains public models. It stays inside a system the company controls.
Who makes the call
Automate first and hope nothing slips.
A person decides on every step that matters. The system surfaces, a human signs.
04The result

Know-how that lived in a few heads is now on a platform the company owns.

92%
less sales-team time spent on RFQs

Drawings and parts lists arrive at the quote already decoded, checked against the way the company's own experts read them.

What changed

One platform, owned outright

Finance, the floor, and engineering and sales work from one private platform. The company owns the platform, the data, and everything it learns.

What's next

Supply chain and quality

The next modules reuse the data, permissions, and audit trail already in place. Hours returned stays the headline measure.

Keep reading

More customer stories.

Customer, staff, product, and program details have been removed to protect the client's confidentiality. Client names available upon request.

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