AGCO scales employee-built AI agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio

Overview

Agricultural machinery maker AGCO Corporation used Microsoft Copilot Studio and Microsoft 365 Copilot to let employees become citizen developers building their own AI agents under central governance. After a leadership meeting where about 900 of 2,200 attendees volunteered to become agent 'makers,' the maker community grew to roughly 2,000 employees, producing hundreds of citizen-built and enterprise agents in production, and AGCO cut some quality reviews in its manufacturing workflows from weeks to about an hour.

The challenge

AGCO's product improvements are often implemented as running changes within active production builds requiring coordination across multiple teams, with handoffs that don't follow a linear process and much communication happening outside structured workflows; as a result, quality and warranty processes could stretch over weeks or months as a small group of experts interpreted data and guided decisions across teams. AGCO also wanted employees to use AI safely rather than experiment with disconnected tools outside enterprise governance.

The solution

AGCO chose Microsoft Copilot Studio for agent creation and Microsoft 365 Copilot for everyday productivity since employees already worked in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive and SharePoint. At a leadership meeting of about 2,200 people, roughly 900 employees volunteered to become agent "makers," received access and training, and were supported through a Microsoft Teams community. Agents bring context into workflows, connect data across design and supply chain systems, and move issues forward: a supplier agent reads contracts to identify savings opportunities, and an agronomy agent combines AGCO agronomy studies with sales guidance to help sales teams connect agricultural issues to relevant machines.

Reported business value

AGCO's maker community grew from the original 900-plus to roughly 2,000 employees, and the company now has several hundred enterprise agents in production with several hundred more moving through cohorts to consolidate and optimize them. AGCO is cutting some quality reviews in its manufacturing workflows from weeks to about an hour, moving from a time-consuming process of review, analysis and alignment to a state where issues are read, validated and quickly advanced to the next step.