Wheel traceability begins with a twelve digit number

The problem

The weakest link in the whole traceability chain is somebody typing, standing on the dock.

The traceability an automotive customer demands reaches back to the steel heat of every wheel. That entire chain, which underpins the response to a field claim, rests on someone typing a twelve digit number correctly, standing up, with a truck waiting on the dock. It is the most fragile point in the plant's whole traceability and the hardest to defend in front of an auditor. And its failure mode is invisible at the time: a mistyped number throws no error, it simply ties the coil to the wrong heat. The cost surfaces three weeks later, when a specific wheel has to be traced and the trail leads nowhere. Meanwhile the operational pressure on the dock pushes the other way: every minute of typing is a billable minute of carrier demurrage.

• The traceability an automotive customer requires reaches back to the steel heat of every wheel. That entire chain rests on somebody typing a twelve digit number correctly.
• It is typed standing up, with a truck waiting at the dock and a large-format delivery note of eight to twenty lines in front of them.
• The failure is invisible at the time: a mistyped number does not raise an error, it simply ties the coil to the wrong heat.
• The cost shows up three weeks later, when a specific wheel has to be traced and the trail leads nowhere.
• And operational pressure pushes the other way: every minute of typing is a minute of billable carrier demurrage.

How it fits the IRIS system

Connect in photo mode on analog documents, pushing into the business system.

Connect in photo-to-analogue mode with posting to the business system.

The on-screen summary arrives with the discrepancies between delivery note and labels already highlighted. That is the point where there is no control at all today: nobody compares twenty labels against twenty delivery note lines with a truck waiting.

• A photo of the delivery note, recognised with its table structure, lines and quantities.
• A photo of the coil tags, reading standard barcode and two-dimensional symbologies plus plain optical recognition when a tag is printed without symbology.
• An on-screen summary with note-versus-tag discrepancies already highlighted.
• The supervisor validates with one tap and Connect creates the goods receipt with the heat number tied and the photo of the original document attached.

See the full IRIS architecture →

Before and after

Today's receiving versus captured receiving

Aspect	Today	With iLEAN Connect
Time per truck	30-45 minutes of typing	A couple of minutes
Carrier demurrage	Recurring and billable	Zero
Heat tied to the coil	Depends on manual typing	Read from the label and validated
Delivery note versus labels	Nobody compares them	Discrepancies highlighted before validating
Documentary evidence	The note, in a filing cabinet	Photo of the document attached to the entry
ERP licences in receiving	3-5	1, the supervisor who validates

Impact estimate

Estimated impact — to validate with your own 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 3-7 months — the shortest in the series, because the saving comes in three forms at once.
• 💰 Financial angle: if 3 to 5 receiving and warehouse people hold a business system licence purely to book goods in, with Connect only the validating supervisor needs one: from 3-5 down to 1, a 50-70 % reduction in recurring licences.
• Carrier demurrage you stop paying, truck after truck.
• Heat-to-wheel traceability backed by attached documentary evidence instead of depending on a keystroke.

estimated payback 3-7 months — the shortest in the series, because the saving comes in three forms at once. 💰 Financial angle: if 3 to 5 receiving and warehouse people hold a business system licence purely to book incoming material, with Connect only the validating supervisor needs one: from 3-5 down to 1, a 50-70 % reduction in receiving module licences, recurring annually. Add the carrier demurrage you stop being charged, which is cash within the same financial year. *Estimate to validate.*

And the fair question from the production manager

«Does it read a dirty or creased label on the dock?» — the coil label carries standard barcode and two-dimensional symbology, which is direct reading; flat optical recognition only comes in when the label is printed without symbology. In that case it is an anchored task and the best models drop below 1.5% error [1]. And above all there is the cross-check: if label and delivery note do not match, the discrepancy is highlighted rather than resolved silently.

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