The label coder stops depending on manual typing

The problem

The last physical step before the customer depends on a keyboard.

the coder is the last physical step before a bundle enters sewing or a carton ships to a customer. One typing error in size, color or lot turns into a return.

• The coder prints the size-color-lot label that goes on the bundle before sewing or on the carton before shipping. It is the last physical step before the customer.
• It has an API, but it sits isolated from the ERP, so every order change means hand-typing the spec. On a day with many short orders, that is dozens of specs typed under time pressure.
• One wrong keystroke turns an XL into an L or a navy into a royal blue, and the label is printed with full confidence. The label looks perfect; only the content is wrong, and nobody downstream questions a printed label.
• Some of those monthly typing errors become returns, and on a uniform program a mislabeled carton is a complaint about the whole shipment.

How it fits the IRIS system

Connect stitches the ERP and the coder — the spec publishes itself.

Connect stitches the ERP and the coder together via API. When the ERP marks a cutting order's start, the spec is published automatically to the coder — an order change is one tap, not typing.

When the ERP marks the start of a cutting order, the spec is published to the coder automatically. An order change becomes one tap instead of a typing job, and the coder does not have to be replaced to get there. The keyboard disappears from the last step before the customer, which is exactly where it was most dangerous.

See the full IRIS architecture →

Before and after

The typed coder versus the coder stitched to the ERP

Aspect	Today	With iLEAN Connect
Where the spec comes from	Typed at the coder	Published by the ERP via API
Order change	Retype size, color and lot	One tap
Typing errors per month	Several, some tied to returns	Zero of human origin
Mislabeled size or color	Found by the customer	Not printed
The coder	—	Kept, not replaced
What the label proves	What someone typed	What the ERP holds for that order

monthly typing errors (some tied to returns) → zero human-origin labeling errors.

Impact estimate

Impact estimate — to be validated against your return history.

The block below is an estimate to be validated against your plant's actual data. We put it forward so the committee has an order of magnitude; we refine it during the assessment.

• Estimated payback 3-6 months, the fastest of the Connect cases in this matrix.
• Drastic reduction in the risk of returns from mislabeled size or color. On a uniform program, a single avoided return can pay for the integration.
• Human-origin labeling errors go to zero. The errors that remain, if any, are traceable to their source in the ERP.
• And there is no machine to replace: the existing coder's API is what gets used. The integration is one of the shortest projects in the matrix, which is why its payback comes first.

fast 3-6 month payback, drastic reduction in the risk of returns from mislabeled size/color. *Estimate to validate*.

And the fair question from the production manager

“And if the ERP holds the wrong spec?” — then the coder would print it faithfully, which is why the spec it receives is one a person already validated upstream. Moving a size-color-lot spec field to field between two APIs is the most anchored task in this matrix, where the best models drop below 1.5% error [1] — and here there is not even a reading involved, only a structured handoff logged order by order. If the ERP is wrong, the log shows where the error was born, which today is impossible.

^[1] OpenAI paper "Why Language Models Hallucinate", 2025 — on the reliability of AI in anchored tasks.