CoreMill Automation

CoreMill Automation is a Detroit industrial-AI outfit operating out of the third floor of an old Corktown auto-parts warehouse that has been converted three times in the past decade, most recently into office space. Six people, including two former line-engineering managers who survived three rounds of layoffs at one of the legacy automakers before deciding they would rather build than be reorganized.

Their models handle plant-floor optimization for mid-sized US manufacturers — predictive maintenance, energy-cost reduction, the kind of work that requires understanding both how an assembly line is supposed to run and how it actually runs when a third of the workforce is out with the flu. They charge fairly — five-figure Cu per deployment, occasionally low six-figure for full-line work — and they invoice within the week of shipping. Their customers tend to renew.

The office contains, on a side table, a complete cast-iron block from a 1968 V8 engine. It was a gift from one of their first customers. Nobody is sure why. It has not been moved.

CoreMill’s senior partner keeps, in a desk drawer, a printed list of factories that no longer exist — closed, demolished, repurposed. He started the list as a personal record of his old employers. It now has thirty-seven entries. He says, when pressed, that the list is a useful reminder of what their models are competing against. It is, he does not need to add, also a useful reminder of what happens when the models lose.