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Fix It Before It Breaks: How LineWise Helps Factories Stay Ahead

Ksenia Yevtushenko -

In the fast-paced, high-stakes environment of modern manufacturing, downtime isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a costly obstacle that chips away at productivity, profit margins, and morale. But what if there was a way to minimize that downtime by empowering frontline workers with instant, AI-powered troubleshooting assistance?

That’s the vision behind LineWise, a San Francisco-based startup founded in 2024. By harnessing artificial intelligence and organization-specific knowledge, LineWise transforms manufacturing teams into self-sufficient experts, drastically reducing the need for internal escalations and enabling faster issue resolution.

Who Are the Founders Behind LineWise?

The story of LineWise begins at the intersection of artificial intelligence, operations strategy, and hands-on engineering.

Zhichu Ren, a researcher at MIT, was working with vision models to aid in lab logging and materials root-cause analysis. His deep understanding of machine learning's potential in operational contexts set the foundation for what LineWise would become.

Meanwhile, Tanachart (James) Kujareevanich was pursuing his MBA at MIT with a background as an operational consultant. He understood firsthand the pain points that plagued factory floors — inefficiencies, unplanned downtime, and the steep learning curve for new technicians.

Together, Zhichu and James connected through their shared experiences at MIT and were soon joined by Wenbo Zhang, a founding engineer at a food inspection startup and a mutual friend. Wenbo brought firsthand experience in deploying AI-driven tools in real-world production environments. With complementary skill sets and a shared vision, the trio launched LineWise to reimagine how manufacturing teams solve problems.

What Problem Is LineWise Solving in the Manufacturing Industry?

Manufacturing teams face a recurring challenge: when equipment fails or processes go awry, troubleshooting often relies on tribal knowledge, escalations to senior technicians, or long waits for documentation review. This leads to:

  • Costly downtime
  • Bottlenecks in communication
  • Repeated issues due to lack of historical tracking
  • Overloaded engineering support teams

LineWise eliminates these bottlenecks by acting as an intelligent, always-available assistant trained on a factory’s unique processes and previous incidents. The result? Technicians receive dynamic, AI-guided diagnostics tailored to their specific situation — no more endless Slack threads or rifling through PDFs.

How Does the LineWise Platform Work?

At its core, LineWise is a knowledge-accelerated AI troubleshooting platform that learns from every incident, fix, and process video. Here’s how it delivers impact on the factory floor:

1. AI-Guided Troubleshooting

When a technician encounters a problem, LineWise delivers real-time, contextual guidance based on similar issues from the past. The system pulls from previously logged incidents, SOPs, and expert fixes to suggest a resolution — without needing escalation.

2. Searchable Incident Memory

Each time a problem is solved, LineWise adds the fix to a centralized, searchable knowledge base. Over time, the platform builds a comprehensive library of what’s worked, creating a virtuous loop where every solved issue makes the system smarter.

3. Video-to-SOP Conversion

Instead of relying on manual documentation, LineWise turns expert-recorded process videos into step-by-step Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). This dramatically reduces the burden on engineers and allows tribal knowledge to be captured effortlessly.

4. Secure Data Handling

Security is non-negotiable. LineWise is actively pursuing ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certifications, ensuring that all customer data — including internal documentation and proprietary processes — is protected with the highest industry standards.

Why Is LineWise Different from Other AI Platforms in Manufacturing?

Unlike generic AI platforms, LineWise is deeply purpose-built for troubleshooting in the manufacturing context. It doesn’t just suggest generic fixes or offer static documentation. It:

  • Learns from your factory’s real problems.
  • Adapts to your team’s workflows.
  • Captures your institutional knowledge.

In this way, LineWise isn’t just a tool — it becomes an extension of the team, empowering less experienced technicians to solve complex problems with confidence.

The focus is not on replacing human judgment, but augmenting human expertise with AI-powered speed and accuracy.

What Results Have Manufacturing Teams Seen with LineWise?

While specific client names are under wraps, the feedback from early adopters is clear:

  • Significantly reduced escalations to engineering and supervisory teams
  • Faster issue resolution, even for complex equipment problems
  • Improved training and onboarding for new technicians
  • Higher retention of institutional knowledge, reducing the impact of employee turnover

LineWise has quickly gained traction among mid-sized to enterprise-level manufacturing firms who are looking for scalable, intelligent systems to modernize their operations.

How Is the Team Positioned for Long-Term Success?

With a founding team that blends deep tech, operational savvy, and engineering experience, LineWise is uniquely positioned to tackle the nuanced challenges of the manufacturing world.

The startup is part of the X25 batch, backed by Y Combinator — a seal of early-stage validation that has helped launch companies like Dropbox, Stripe, and OpenAI. The team’s mission isn’t just to deploy AI — it’s to embed intelligence into the DNA of every factory line, globally.

By making frontline expertise scalable, LineWise is enabling a future where problems are solved in minutes — not hours or days.

What’s Next for LineWise?

In the coming months, LineWise is focused on:

  • Scaling across additional manufacturing verticals
  • Deepening integrations with factory systems and sensors
  • Expanding language support for international teams
  • Releasing new generative features for SOP creation and auto-tagging of incident types

With the increasing complexity of factory operations and rising expectations for efficiency, the demand for LineWise’s solution is only growing.

Why Does LineWise Matter in the Bigger Picture?

The world is in the midst of a manufacturing renaissance, with new factories, technologies, and automation tools emerging every year. But amidst this transformation, the people on the line — technicians, engineers, supervisors — still face the daily challenge of solving problems fast.

LineWise exists to support these teams. By capturing knowledge, guiding decisions, and accelerating resolutions, the platform offers a new kind of operational superpower: AI-guided expertise at everyone’s fingertips.

In short, LineWise isn’t just reducing downtime — it’s redefining how we solve problems in manufacturing.

Conclusion: Is LineWise the Future of Operational Intelligence?

As factories become smarter, so must the tools that power them. LineWise is at the forefront of this evolution, proving that AI isn’t just for futuristic robots or self-driving cars — it can be a trusted ally on the factory floor, today.

With its powerful blend of machine learning, contextual guidance, and secure knowledge management, LineWise is giving manufacturing teams the confidence and tools they need to troubleshoot smarter, faster, and more independently.

And for the founders of LineWise, that’s not just a technical achievement — it’s a mission to empower the people who keep the world running.