How to add a private AI layer to Infor EAM on-prem

Infor EAM tables carry the R5 prefix. In commonly documented schemas, R5OBJECTS holds equipment and assets, R5EVENTS holds work orders, R5PARTS holds the parts catalogue, and R5STORES and stock tables hold inventory. Work orders carry columns such as EVT_CODE, EVT_DESC, EVT_OBJECT, EVT_STATUS, EVT_ORG and EVT_MRC (the responsible department). Confirm column names and any user-defined fields against your version's data dictionary before building views.

The supported route for transactions is EAM's web services, which provide SOAP and REST style access to entities such as work orders and equipment; your version's documentation defines the exact services. ION connectivity is available in some deployments for event-driven integration. For reading, a reporting copy of the database is simpler and does not load the application tier.

EAM controls access by user group, organisation and department, and many screens filter by organisation. The tool server should identify the signed-in person, look up their organisations and departments from EAM, and add those predicates (for example on EVT_ORG and the equipment organisation column) to every query. Do not rely on the model to remember them.

Documents attached to work orders and equipment may have narrower rights than the work order itself. Carry the access control list into the retrieval index as metadata and filter at query time.

Sizing depends on concurrency, not on headcount. A pilot of 10 to 20 users with a 7B to 14B class model can run on one workstation-class or datacentre GPU with 24 to 48 GB of memory. A site with 100 to 300 named users, of whom a third use it daily, often needs one to four GPUs depending on model size and answer length. Retrieval indexes for tens of thousands of documents are typically in the single to low double digit gigabytes. Use the sizing calculator for your own numbers and treat results as ranges.

Roll out in three phases. Phase one is read-only questions over a small set of views and documents, with every answer showing the query or sources. Phase two adds drafts, such as a summary, a message or a prepared transaction, that the user reviews but that nothing posts. Phase three adds approved actions through Infor EAM's supported interfaces, always under the approving user's identity, with an audit record.

Free-text failure notes are inconsistent. Retrieval over them is useful but will surface noise, so test on real histories. Equipment hierarchies and custom fields differ widely between sites.

If your main need is dashboards and standard maintenance KPIs, EAM's own reporting and analytics are enough. A model adds value for natural-language history search, cross-asset comparisons and document question answering.