Pani

FAQ

Questions people ask before they start.

How Zed works

Isn't this just ChatGPT for water treatment?

No, and the difference is what it can see.

ChatGPT is a brilliant generalist that has never seen your plant. It doesn't know your permit limits, your seasonal patterns, or that the train you call RO-1 has the older membranes. It can't open your historian.

Zed starts from your plant and works outward: your data, your documents, your plant's context, and a knowledge base built for water treatment. Every answer comes back with the sources it used, the steps it took, and a confidence score. When Zed doesn't have what it needs, it says so and tells you which document would help.

How Zed builds its picture of your plant

What if Zed gets something wrong?

It will sometimes. That's why every answer shows its work.

You get the sources Zed used, the steps it took, and a confidence score. The sources link straight into the chart, so you can check the number yourself instead of taking Zed's word for it. When Zed doesn't have what it needs, it says so and names the document that would help.

Zed is decision support. Your engineers and operators decide what happens at your plant.

Can Zed change anything at my plant?

No, and it never will. Pani doesn't touch your controls and doesn't operate equipment.

Your control system is air-gapped, and Pani sits outside it. Pani reads your data, tells you what it found, and the decision is yours.

Getting started

How long does implementation take?

That depends which part you mean, so here are the pieces separately.

Zed reading your plant and auditing it: under a day. You upload what you have, Zed builds a working model of your plant and audits it. Same on Core and Enterprise.

Setting up a recurring data source: about thirty minutes. A CSV arriving by email, an API push, an MQTT feed.

Connecting live telemetry from your SCADA: four to eight weeks, and often much less. Most of that is edge-device setup and your own IT approvals rather than anything Pani does.

That third one is optional and it comes later. You don't need it to get the first one, which is the whole point.

What data do you need to get started?

About six months of operational data. Two years is better. That's PLC or SCADA exports, WIMS, or shift and manual logs, in whatever form they're in.

Everything else is optional and each one makes the audit sharper: permits, lab results, P&IDs, O&M manuals, asset lists, maintenance logs.

Don't reformat anything first. Zed handles messy, incomplete and inconsistently formatted data, because that's what plants actually have.

What happens when you start

Do I need SCADA, or new instrumentation?

No. Pani onboards plants at any instrumentation level, from fully manual to full SCADA.

Most tools ask you to modernize your instrumentation first, which is a capital project before you've seen a single result. Live telemetry can come later, when it makes sense.

Cost, security and day to day

How much does it cost?

The audit costs nothing.

After that, Pani Core is a per-plant subscription that costs less than one additional hire. Pani Enterprise is scoped to what you need, so that one's a conversation.

Compare Core and Enterprise

Do you train on your customers' data?

No. Pani does not train its own models on client data.

Is my data secure?

Pani runs on SOC 2-compliant AWS infrastructure, with encryption in transit and at rest. Access is controlled by role, scoped to each plant, and protected with multi-factor authentication.

Zed only sees the data you connect and the documents you upload. It doesn't answer from the open internet.

Does it work on a phone or tablet?

Yes, in any browser. There's no app to download.

Operators can run their rounds and enter readings at the asset on a tablet, rather than on paper and then again into a spreadsheet afterwards.

More on digital rounds

We already have WIMS. Does Pani replace it?

No. Pani works with it.

WIMS is a system of record. Pani is the layer above it, reading your WIMS data, your historian, your logs and your documents together, and telling you what's actually happening.

Your WIMS data flows in on a schedule you set. Nobody re-keys anything.