The alert that arrives by email, turned into a scheduling decision

The problem

The official demand comes by EDI; the real one comes by email.

A foundry master schedule is built with one firm week and several forecast weeks. Every change not absorbed in time is paid twice: in premium freight to hit the window, and in an unplanned pattern change on the molding line, which costs hours of cadence at the plant's bottleneck. Critical alerts arrive mixed with dozens of routine messages in one person's mailbox. What happens next depends on that person being at their screen with time to cross-check the alert against the real state of the plant. Read late in the afternoon, tomorrow's schedule is already frozen.

• The EDI release fixes one firm week and several forecast weeks. What changes the week arrives another way: the buyer pulling a shipment forward, the carrier missing the window, the ferroalloy supplier slipping two days.
• Those messages land in one planner's mailbox, mixed with dozens of routine ones, and are read when that person is at their screen with time to cross-check them against the plant. On a night shift, nobody is.
• Read late in the afternoon, tomorrow's molding schedule is already frozen. The response is premium freight to hit the window, or an unplanned pattern change at the plant's bottleneck.
• Every unplanned pattern change costs an hour of cadence on the molding line, and that hour is never recovered: the line is the constraint, and lost molds are lost forever.

How it fits the IRIS system

Connect in chaotic-sources mode — silent copy, around the clock.

Connect in "chaotic sources" mode:

Finding out sooner is not the point; knowing what to do is. The alert comes back already crossed with the EDI release, the molding schedule, the raw stock between stages and the shipping windows, as a concrete proposal with its impact calculated. The planner decides; iLEAN does not touch the schedule. The difference is deciding while there is still room instead of reacting when there is none. A pull-in read on Tuesday morning is a sequence change on Wednesday's molding schedule; the same pull-in read on Tuesday evening is a truck paid at premium rate on Thursday.

• iLEAN sits on silent copy of a dedicated mailbox and messaging number, around the clock.
• It extracts intent as soon as the message lands: pull-in, delay, quantity change, non-conformity, transport incident.
• It cross-checks against live data: EDI release, molding schedule, raw stock between stages, finished goods and shipping windows.
• It alerts the right role with a concrete proposal and its calculated impact, not a forwarded email. The person decides.

See the full IRIS architecture →

Before and after

Today's alert versus the cross-checked alert

Aspect	Today, in the inbox	With iLEAN Connect
When it is read	When the planner opens the email	In minute one, day or night
A pull-in from the customer	Premium freight to hit the window	A sequence change while there is room
Ferroalloy delivery slipping	Discovered at the furnace	Crossed with the melting schedule in time
Unplanned pattern changes	Several a week	A significant drop
What you receive	One more email	A proposal with its impact on the schedule
Who decides	Whoever read it	The planner — iLEAN proposes

from hours or a full day between alert and reaction to minutes · from an undifferentiated inbox to a list prioritized by impact on the schedule · from reacting with no room left to deciding while there is room.

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 3-8 months.
• A 30-50% reduction in premium freight caused by late reaction.
• A significant drop in unplanned changes to the master schedule, each of which costs an hour of molding cadence at the bottleneck.
• And the alert arrives sorted by impact instead of by the order it landed in the inbox.

estimated payback 3 to 8 months, with a 30-50% reduction in premium freight caused by late reaction and a significant drop in unplanned changes to the master schedule. *Estimate to validate*.

And the fair question from the production manager

“Are you going to read my planner's email?” — no. iLEAN sits in copy on a dedicated mailbox and a company messaging number: the operational channels with customers, carriers and suppliers, nothing else. On extraction, classifying the intent of a message — pull-in, delay, quantity change, non-conformity, transport incident — is an anchored task where the best models drop below 1.5% error [1], and the action is always executed by a person. What the planner gains is not being the only filter between the inbox and the plant.

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