Conceived by people.
Powered by AI.
Reviewed by people.

Convincingly phrased errors, absurdly distorted representations, code that looks clean at first glance but isn’t on closer inspection: We’ve already encountered all of this in our work with artificial intelligence. An AI result can still appear convincing even when it’s wrong. Anyone who passes it on without checking it won’t notice the error until it has consequences.

At the same time, it wouldn’t be convincing to downplay its benefits. AI takes over many tasks for us that would otherwise take a small team days or even weeks to complete. That’s why we at ESSMANN | Waagen & Automation are sharing here how we use AI, how we handle its results, and what tasks we refuse to delegate to machines.

For our customers, this is no trivial matter. Anyone who needs to rely on precision and safety must also know who is accountable for a figure. With us, it’s always a person.

How AI Helps Us Move Forward

AI shortens development times and reduces research efforts. It often serves as a sounding board for solutions that we hadn’t immediately considered ourselves. It helps us analyze data, review and organize our historical archive spanning more than 165 years, and visualize use cases for software and yard solutions in a way that makes them understandable and tangible.

We deliberately use AI as a tool and an aid. Ultimately, however, it is always a person who reviews and approves the result—and in most cases, several people.

In Development: Software Must Remain Maintainable Without AI

There are currently seven people in our IT department working on the EWA software platform and providing support for EWP . This daily work has led to a rule that is non-negotiable for us: Every line of code in EWA must be readable, understandable, verifiable, and maintainable by our developers—without AI.

AI suggestions are often more extensive than necessary and generate structures that can later be deciphered only with the same tool. We do not want to be subject to that dependency. EWA should still be correctable, verifiable, and updatable in ten years—by the people who will be working with us then.

In the editorial department: proofreading is always done

Every article that involved AI in its research is reviewed by the relevant department before it is published. Our editorial team is uncompromising on this point, and that’s by design: AI can express itself confidently even when it’s wrong. Only the colleagues who built, installed, or calibrated the scale can make a technical assessment.

We take the same approach with images. We deliberately use illustrations instead of photorealistic AI visualizations. An image that looks like a photo is also interpreted as a photo—and would thus depict a facility that never actually existed, complete with all the oddities that AI tends to introduce into the results. Whenever we use AI-generated images, we label them with an “AI” note.

In the Store: AI Takes the Lead, Humans Give the Go-Ahead

At the ESSMANN Scale Shop , AI helps create and maintain extensive lists of product variants—a task where machines are more reliable than humans on a Friday afternoon. Our e-commerce team performs the final check. No one who isn’t familiar with the product is authorized to approve the weighing range, graduation, protection class, or certification.

In Customer Service: Experience Remains the Foundation

Our service technicians use AI wherever it helps them find solutions—for example, when searching through technical manuals as thick as books. It doesn’t replace the in-depth experience of our technicians, but rather the time it takes to search. Ultimately, it’s still the service technician on site at the equipment who makes the final decision.

Why We Do It This Way

We are scale manufacturers. Our business is ensuring that a number is accurate— transparent, repeatable, and verifiable for everyone involved. A result that merely appears plausible does not meet this standard. What applies to our scales also applies to everything we write about them and to the software that controls them.

That is why the phrase from the headline appears below every piece of content that involved AI—as a label and as a commitment:

Conceived by humans. Powered by AI. Verified by humans.

Would you like to know where we use AI in your project—and where we deliberately choose not to? Get in touch with us. A real person will answer on the other end. And people matter more than any AI.

ESSMANN | Scales & Automation – Responsible Innovation for Precision Since 1860

Updated August 11, 2026 – 3:30 p.m. Reviewed regularly and updated as needed. The Editorial Team

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