Receiving mold steel is not warehouse routine: it is a project milestone

The problem

Receiving steel is a project milestone signed under a waiting carrier.

Until the plate is in, the detail does not go to the machine. That is why every receipt is a milestone on the mold calendar and not a warehouse formality. The mill certificate, moreover, is documentation that must be retrievable years later, when the customer asks which heat a cavity came from. Today that traceability depends on someone typing accurately under the pressure of a waiting carrier. When material is imported, the number of document lines multiplies and with it the chance that the steel ends up loosely tied to its mold.

• Until the plate is in, the detail does not go to the machine. Every receipt is a milestone on the mold calendar, not a warehouse formality.
• The truck brings plates, the hot runner and boxes of standard components, each destined for a specific mold: a slip with many lines, one mill certificate per plate and labels of imported references.
• The mill certificate must be retrievable years later, when the customer asks which heat a cavity came from. Today that traceability depends on someone typing accurately with a carrier waiting.
• With imported material the number of document lines multiplies, and with it the chance that the steel ends up loosely tied to its mold.

How it fits the IRIS system

Connect in photo-over-document mode — slip, certificates and labels, then the ERP.

Connect in photo-over-document mode, with an ERP post after validation.

Photo of the slip, photo of the certificates, photo of the labels. Connect reads plain text, barcodes, GS1-128 and QR, cross-checks references, quantities and heat numbers against the open purchase orders and the target mold's bill of materials, and posts after one validation tap. The certificate is archived linked to the detail that will be built from that plate, and the detail's traveler can be released to the machine the same hour the truck leaves.

• Photo of the packing slip, the mill certificates and the labels. Connect reads plain text, barcodes, GS1-128 and QR.
• It extracts references, quantities and heat numbers and cross-checks them against open purchase orders and the target mold's bill of materials.
• On-screen summary, one-tap validation.
• Posted to the ERP through the API. The certificate is archived and linked to the detail that will be built from that plate.

See the full IRIS architecture →

Before and after

Today's receipt versus the captured receipt

Aspect	Today	With iLEAN Connect
Signing and keying a complex receipt	30-60 minutes	Minutes
Mill certificate	Filed on paper, unlinked	Archived against the detail
Which heat a cavity came from	Rebuilt if the paper turns up	Immediate lookup by mold
Slip versus purchase order	Checked by eye, or not	Cross-checked line by line
Carrier demurrage	Recurring	Eliminated
Purchasing and receiving licenses	Two or three	One, the manager who validates

from 30-60 minutes per complex receipt between signing and keying → minutes. From heat traceability rebuildable "if the paper turns up" → an immediate lookup by mold. From carrier demurrage → eliminated.

Impact estimate

Impact estimate — to be validated against your actual ERP invoice.

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.

• 💰 CFO angle: people who log into the ERP only to register goods receipts no longer need a seat — a typical 50% to 70% cut in purchasing and receiving licenses, recurring.
• Estimated payback 3-8 months.
• Demurrage avoided, truck after truck.
• And heat-to-detail-to-mold traceability that exists from the receipt, not from a search two years later.

estimated payback 3-8 months. Financial angle: people who log into the ERP only to register goods receipts no longer need a seat — a typical 50% to 70% cut in purchasing and receiving licenses, plus the demurrage avoided. *Estimate to validate against the actual ERP invoice*.

And the fair question from the production manager

"Every steel mill lays out its certificate differently — does it read all of them?" — yes, and without asking any supplier to change anything: the model extracts the table structure and the heat number without a per-supplier template, and labels are read by symbology where present and by optical recognition where not. It is an anchored task, where the best models drop below 1.5% error [1], and the receiving manager validates before anything enters.

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