The audit evidence pack, generated as the process happens

The problem

The cost of the audit is the two weeks before it.

IATF 16949 does not forgive documentary gaps, and with brake and chassis parts the special characteristics demand demonstrable records end to end: charge lot origin, heat chemistry, process parameters, signed releases, lab results, heat treatment, machining measurements. Reconstructing all of that after the fact consumes weeks of senior people and still leaves holes that turn into non-conformities. The real cost is not the hours: it is the risk to a certification without which you cannot invoice an OEM. On the logistics side the same happens with MMOG/LE-type evaluations, where you must demonstrate inventory control, returnable container management and window compliance.

• IATF 16949 does not forgive documentary gaps, and on brake and chassis parts the special characteristics demand records end to end: charge lot origin, heat chemistry, process parameters, signed releases, lab results, heat treatment, machining measurements.
• The evidence exists, scattered across paper, folders, emails and the manufacturing system. Reconstructing it consumes weeks of senior people and still leaves holes that turn into non-conformities.
• The real cost is not the hours: it is the risk to a certification without which you cannot invoice an OEM, and it is renewed against the evidence of every heat you poured.
• On the logistics side the same happens with MMOG/LE: inventory control, returnable container management and window compliance have to be demonstrated, not described.

How it fits the IRIS system

Edge and Connect capture; Agents organizes by the standard that will ask.

Agents, resting on everything Edge and Connect already capture:

Every heat and every critical changeover leaves its evidence at the time it happens: before and after photos, decision log, signatures, measurements, lot origin and lab result. Anything rebuilt afterwards inherits the gaps of whatever nobody wrote down — and it is precisely in the reconstruction that the non-conformities appear. The auditor logs in and downloads; nobody in the plant spends hours preparing. The dossier can be cut by period for the certifier, by heat for a metallurgical query, or by part number for the OEM's layered process audit, from the same evidence.

• Every heat and every critical changeover leaves its evidence at the time: before and after photos of the critical points, decision log, signatures, measurements, lot origin and lab result.
• Agents organizes it by the standard that will demand it — automotive quality system, customer process audits, heat treatment, casting, the materials and logistics standard, environment and safety.
• It generates the dossier by period, by heat or by part number, ready to download.
• The auditor logs in and downloads; nobody in the plant spends hours preparing.

See the full IRIS architecture →

Before and after

Today's preparation versus the permanent dossier

Aspect	Today	With iLEAN Agents
Preparation per audit	Two weeks of senior people	Zero
Evidence by heat	Paper, folders and emails	One dossier, by period, heat or part number
IATF, VDA 6.3, CQI-9, CQI-27, MMOG/LE	Rebuilt for each one	Same evidence, indexed per standard
Documentary gap	Found by the auditor	Detected the day it should have been generated
Auditor access	A room and a pile of folders	A scoped view and a download
Certification risk	Every visit	Continuously protected

from 2 weeks of preparation per audit to zero · from evidence scattered across paper, folders and emails to a dossier structured by standard · from non-conformities caused by documentary gaps to continuous traceability.

Impact estimate

Impact estimate — to be validated with your numbers.

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 6-12 months on released senior hours alone.
• From two weeks of preparation per audit to zero, for every certifier, OEM and customer with audit rights.
• The real value, harder to quantify and far larger: continuous protection of the certification you invoice the OEM with.
• And non-conformities from documentary gaps replaced by continuous traceability.

estimated payback 6 to 12 months on released senior hours alone; the real value, harder to quantify and far larger, is the continuous protection of the certification and of customer audits. *Estimate to validate*.

And the fair question from the production manager

“Isn't this just another document manager?” — the difference is direction. A document manager stores what somebody decides to upload, after the fact, and inherits the same gaps. Here the dossier closes the instant the heat or the changeover happens, because the evidence is generated by the cases upstream; what Agents does is reorganize it for whichever standard asks. Where a figure is extracted from a document, that is an anchored task where the best models drop below 1.5% error [1], and it was already confirmed by a person at the release gate before it ever reached the dossier.

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