Lot labels, zero typing

The problem

The last piece of information before the box ships is typed by hand.

The traceability label is the last piece of physical information before the box ships to the customer. One mistyped digit can mislabel an entire lot, and it surfaces at IATF audit — or worse, at the customer.

• The traceability label carries part number, lot and date. It is the last thing the plant controls before the box leaves the dock and becomes the customer's problem to interpret.
• The labeler is modern and has an API sitting unused, while the ERP holds exactly the data the label needs.
• Between the two there is a person typing, and every lot change on every press is one more chance to get a digit wrong, usually at the worst moment of the shift.
• One wrong digit mislabels a whole lot, and it surfaces in an IATF audit as a traceability finding — or, worse, at the customer, where it becomes containment.

How it fits the IRIS system

Connect stitches two modern systems through their own interfaces.

Connect stitches two modern systems together via API. When the ERP marks an order as started, it automatically publishes part number, lot and date to the labeler. A lot change becomes one tap in the ERP, not manual entry on the labeler.

Neither machine is replaced and neither is reprogrammed: each one already exposes what it needs to. When the ERP marks an order as started, part number, lot and date are published to the labeler automatically, and the lot change becomes one tap in the ERP instead of a keyboard at the press. It is the shortest payback of the twelve because there is no hardware to buy.

See the full IRIS architecture →

Before and after

The isolated labeler versus the stitched labeler

Aspect	Today	With iLEAN Connect
Where the label data comes from	Typed at the labeler	Published by the active ERP order
A lot change	Retyped, under time pressure	One tap in the ERP
A mistyped digit	A whole lot mislabeled	Impossible: nothing is typed
What comes back from the labeler	Nothing	Labels printed, confirmed per lot
Count on the label versus count in the ERP	Reconciled by hand	Matched automatically
A labeling finding at audit	A standing risk	Removed at source

monthly typing errors (some with an associated audit finding) → zero human-origin labeling errors.

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 3-6 months, the fastest of the twelve because there is no equipment to buy.
• Labeling errors of human origin down to zero, which is the category that produces audit findings.
• A drastic cut in traceability non-conformity risk, both at IATF audit and at the customer.
• Reconciliation between what was printed and what the ERP says was produced, done automatically instead of at month end.

estimated payback 3-6 months, drastic reduction in traceability non-conformity risk at IATF audit or customer level. Estimate to validate.

And the fair question from the production manager

"And if the connection drops mid-lot, do we stop printing?" — no. The labeler keeps printing the last order it received and iLEAN flags the gap; nothing is invented and nothing is guessed. Publishing structured fields between two systems is an anchored task where the best models drop below 1.5% error [1], and here there is not even free text to interpret: it is the ERP's own data traveling untouched.

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