The programme
Certified Industrial FDE
— Food Industry
A live-cohort certification for plant professionals who want to deploy applied AI in food manufacturing. You bring a real problem from your own line, you finish with it running in production, and the credential lives at a public URL anyone can check.
It is not a video library and not a bootcamp. It is eight weeks with fixed dates, an assigned senior AI engineer, and a deployment as the final deliverable.
- Start
- Applications close
- Duration
- 8 WEEKS
- Weekly load
- 6 H
- Seats announced
- 14 SEP 2026
- Mentor ratio
- 1 : 4
Tuition €4,900
Seat count is set by mentoring capacity, not by marketing. Enrolment is arranged with a person after your application is reviewed.
The scarce half is the industrial one.
Model skills can be taught in months. Knowing why a line stops at 3 a.m., which sensor lies, and who on the shift can authorise a change — that takes years on the floor. You already paid for that half.
What is missing is the path from that knowledge to something running in production: framing the problem as a model, getting the data out, validating it against the process, and surviving the first week live. That is what these eight weeks are for.
Who is behind the certification
Sebastián J. Brau
Programme direction and certifying authority
He designed this curriculum, he sets the admission bar, and he signs every credential this academy issues.
- 300+ AI deployments in Tier-1 industrial environments
- Reads every application himself, before anyone pays
- Selects the senior engineers who deliver each cohort
Curriculum
Six modules, one deployment.
Weeks 1 to 6 build the capability; weeks 7 and 8 are the deployment sprint on your own line. Every module ends in something your engineer reviews.
01 From plant symptom to a problem worth modelling
- You will be able to
- Turn a vague complaint from the line — “we scrap too much on the night shift” — into a problem with a measurable target and a euro figure attached.
- Deliverable
- A one-page problem statement for your own line, with baseline, target and the decision it changes.
- Reviewed by
- Your assigned senior AI engineer, in the weekly session.
02 Getting the data out: historians, PLCs, MES and reality
- You will be able to
- Pull a usable dataset out of the systems you already have, and recognise the four ways plant data lies: gaps, drifting tags, manual overrides and unlogged setpoint changes.
- Deliverable
- An extracted, documented dataset from your own plant, with its known defects listed.
- Reviewed by
- Your assigned senior AI engineer, in the weekly session.
03 The smallest model that beats current practice
- You will be able to
- Build and compare a baseline and a first model, and defend why the simplest one that clears the baseline is the one that ships.
- Deliverable
- A working model on your data, benchmarked against how the decision is made today.
- Reviewed by
- Your assigned senior AI engineer, in the weekly session.
04 Validating against the process, not against a test set
- You will be able to
- Explain why offline accuracy lies on a line, and design a validation that survives shift changes, recipe changes and seasonality.
- Deliverable
- A validation protocol agreed with your quality or operations lead.
- Reviewed by
- Your assigned senior AI engineer, in the weekly session.
05 Into production: integration, monitoring and the first bad week
- You will be able to
- Put the model where the decision is actually taken, instrument it, and define what happens when it degrades — including who gets called.
- Deliverable
- A deployment and rollback plan, with the monitoring signals named.
- Reviewed by
- Your assigned senior AI engineer, in the weekly session.
06 Traceability and compliance: FSMA 204, audits and the inspector
- You will be able to
- Keep an automated decision defensible in front of an auditor: what to log, how long to keep it, and how a model fits alongside traceability obligations in food.
- Deliverable
- The evidence trail for your deployment, in the form your own audit process accepts.
- Reviewed by
- Your assigned senior AI engineer, in the weekly session.
07 Deployment sprint — your model on the line
- You will be able to
- Run the thing in production, with your engineer available while it settles — including the week when something breaks.
- Deliverable
- A model live on a production line, plus the final review that awards the credential.
- Reviewed by
- Your assigned engineer and the programme director.
You are never alone
on the plant floor.
The gap between a course and a deployment is the moment something breaks and nobody is there. Every participant is assigned an engineer who meets one standard: 25+ years deploying AI in industrial environments, with systems running in production.
We do not publish their names. People who deploy AI inside manufacturing plants work under confidentiality with the manufacturers who hire them — the same protection your own plant gets when you bring a project into this programme. Your engineer is introduced to you before the cohort starts, under that same agreement.
One engineer takes four participants, so the cohort is small. Mentoring does not scale.
- Assigned engineer
- 1 : 4
- Named before the cohort starts
- Project review
- Weekly
- On your own plant data
- Response time
- <24h
- Working days
Specifications
- Format
- Live cohort, online + project on your plant
- Language
- English · Spanish cohort from Cohort 02 (2027)
- Duration
- 8 weeks
- Weekly commitment
- 6 hours, including one 90-minute live session
- Final deliverable
- A model running in production
- Mentoring
- Assigned senior AI engineer, 1:4
- Prerequisites
- Plant experience. No coding background required
- Cohort size
- Four participants per engineer — announced when applications open
- Credential
- Certified Industrial FDE — publicly verifiable
- Admission
- Three-question application, reviewed before payment
Tuition
€4,900
One price, one programme. No tiers, no upsells. Invoiced to you or to your company. VAT is applied according to your country and status — see the legal notice.
Founding cohort bonus
Cohort 01 participants get territorial priority on the leads we route to certified professionals: first refusal in their own region for twelve months after certification.
Questions people actually ask
Before you apply.
Who supports me during the programme?
An engineer assigned to you before the cohort starts, who meets one standard: 25+ years deploying AI in industrial environments, with systems running in production. One engineer takes four participants, reviews your project every week and answers inside 24 working hours. We do not publish their names — they work under confidentiality with the manufacturers who hire them, which is the same protection your plant gets here. Yours is introduced to you before the cohort starts, under that same agreement.
Do I need to know how to code?
No. The scarce half of this profile is industrial, and that is the half we do not teach. You will write code during the programme, with support, but nobody is admitted or rejected on it.
What if my plant will not share its data?
That is the third application question, and we ask it before you pay for a reason. Where data cannot leave the site, the project is scoped to run inside it. Where there is no access at all, we will tell you before you pay.
How much time does it take each week?
About six hours: one 90-minute live session and the rest on your own project. Weeks 7 and 8 are the deployment sprint and usually take more, because the model goes live on the line.
What happens if my application is not approved?
Nothing is charged — this site takes no payments at all. You get a written reason within three working days and, where it applies, the cohort we think fits better.
Is the certificate actually verifiable?
Yes. Each credential gets its own public URL on this site, with holder, cohort, issue date and status. It can be revoked, and the page says so if it is. That is the point of a registry.
Three questions, then a decision.
Applications for Cohort 01 close 9 October 2026.