Industrial AI in automotive injection mold shops
A mold shop is nothing like a serial plant. There is no batch here: there is a project. Every mold is a unique six-figure asset that gets designed, machined across hundreds of details, fitted by hand, tried out in a press and delivered against a vehicle launch date. The unit of cost and traceability is not the part produced: it is the mold number and, inside it, the detail number.
That difference explains why standard industrial digitalisation fits this sub-sector so badly. Real project progress lives on job travelers at the machine, EDM runs at night with nobody knowing whether it stopped, the customer's engineering change arrives by email mid-build, and the tryout loop is explained from memory. None of those problems is solved by a bigger ERP: they are solved by capturing what is lost today and having a human sign it.
Below are the IRIS use cases landed on a mold shop: the five Connect capture modes, the two ERP integrations with a financial angle, the machine stitching, AI vision at the tryout press, and the full coordinated system aimed at the one pain that defines this sub-sector — the mold hitting its date.
Capture without changing habits: photo, voice, email, integrations
The job traveler, photographed
Payback 4-9 months · from 1-3 days of latency to second zero
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The EDM starts talking
Payback 5-10 months · a night stoppage known in minutes
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The outside alert that moves the date
Payback 3-8 months · no more steel cut to an obsolete revision
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Hands-free headset on the floor
Payback 4-10 months · bench decisions logged against the mold
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Tablet at the fitting bench
Payback 4-9 months · data signed by the person holding the part
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The CMM report reaches the ERP
Payback 3-7 months · up to 80% fewer quality licenses
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Photo to the steel packing slip
Payback 3-8 months · heat-to-detail traceability from the dock
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Spindle hours straight to the project
Payback 4-9 months · real mold cost while it is built
See the case →Machine vision on the line, in real time
More cases from this series
- The old machine stays itself, but now it reportsAn external camera digitizes the isolated panel of an older EDM: no more blind nights, without opening…
- The human gate sits at the bench, not in an officeNothing the AI captures crosses into the system without a sign-off from the person who knows: two taps…
- The knowledge that walks around and dies at end of shiftThe shop supervisor dictates what he decides while walking: iLEAN structures it against the mold and…
- The job traveler, in the system at second zeroReal progress on every mold detail in the system instantly: one photo of the job traveler and zero habit…
- The shop's most valuable quality data stops living in a folderiLEAN reads the dimensional report as it is saved, ties it to the mold and posts it to the ERP after…
- The mold book writes itself while the mold is builtPhotos, dimensions, parameters, heats and signatures assembled per mold and ordered by automotive…
See how this would look in your shop — a 45-minute session with an iLEAN consultant, no commitment." ---
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