A search that finds nothing in stock still ends in an order, with alternates found across nine branches.
Harman Heavy Vehicle Specialists Parts Identification Agents
Counter staff spend less time hunting parts, and fewer searches end with no option offered.
Two agents that help counter teams identify heavy-vehicle parts from a photograph and offer workable alternates when the primary part is unavailable.
What the agents do
Narrows an unknown part from a photograph to a short list of likely catalog matches, applying Harman's own business rules and interchange data.
- Built by
- PhaseZero, with no systems integrator
- Contributed by
- PhaseZero (Agent platform and delivery partner)
- Industry
- Automotive, Manufacturing & Industrial
- Audience
- B2B
01
The problem
Why this exists
Parts identification is the acute constraint in heavy-duty distribution. A catalog of 25,000 parts, 160 brands, and 450,000 interchanges cannot be held in anyone's head, and the people who come closest took years to get there.
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That makes counter throughput a function of who is working, and it makes every new hire slow for a long time. The second failure is the dead-end result: when the primary part is unavailable and no alternative is offered, the buyer goes to a competitor.
02
Outcomes
What changes when this is in place
- Counter associates can start from a photograph instead of a part number, which reduces how much counter throughput depends on the most experienced staff.
- The Recommend Agent surfaces interchange alternates with availability confirmed against live inventory, so an unavailable primary part has a next option.
- Smart Search adoption grew 154% year over year and customer logins grew 200% year over year. Active customer growth reached 35.3% year over year. Search performance and repeat customer revenue both exceeded the PhaseZero installed-base benchmark.
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- Ian Johnston, VP of Operations and Marketing at Harman Heavy Vehicle Specialists, says the agent narrows options in seconds and shortens the ramp for new staff.
03
How it works
Architecture
Harman Heavy Vehicle Specialists subscribed to the agents through the PhaseZero agent portal and integrated them into its existing commerce and ERP environment over headless APIs and web services, connecting to Infor CloudSuite and VIPAR PARTSPHERE catalog synchronization. No custom development and no ERP modification were required on the Harman side.
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The Visual Agent is trained on Harman's proprietary catalog inside Harman's tenant boundary, and applies Harman's own business rules, supplier relationships, and interchange data. That tenant boundary is the reason the agent can encode commercial preference rather than only visual similarity.
The Visual Agent also operates over the PhaseZero MCP server, confirmed live and in production inside Claude at the time of submission, so the capability is available inside third-party AI environments independently of the commerce platform.
Open standards used
Model Context Protocol (MCP)REST APIs
Tech stack
PhaseZero Visual AgentPhaseZero Recommend AgentPhaseZero MCP serverInfor CloudSuiteVIPAR PARTSPHERE
Resources
Next step
Request an intro
PhaseZero is behind this solution. Ask about part identification without part numbers, and the MACH Alliance will put you in touch with the person who can answer.
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Everyone credited on this solution
- PhaseZeroAgent platform and delivery partner
Every organization named here has a page listing the rest of its work on the Hub.
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Verification
Contributor submission
The detail on this page comes from the contributor's own account of their own work. The MACH Alliance reviews a submission before publishing it and does not independently verify the figures in it.
Where this came from
Solution detail is published from the contributor's 2026 Agent Ready submission to the MACH Alliance. Submitter names and contact details are not published. The submission named the customer as Harman Heavy Duty Specialists Ltd. The company trades as Harman Heavy Vehicle Specialists at harmanhvs.com, which is the name this entry uses.
Status: Live in productionAdded Jul 8, 2026A listing is an editorial decision, not a MACH Alliance certification.
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