Use cases

Six plant situations, followed step by step

Each scenario starts with a problem on the shop floor and shows, in order, which IRIS modules handle it.

These scenarios are built from what the modules do. They are not customer stories.

Start 14-day trialInteractive demo

Production monitoring and OEE

The problem in the plant

Pieces, downtime and scrap are written on paper or in separate files, so the shift lead works with yesterday's numbers.

What happens in IRIS

  1. 01
    IoT

    Sensors send readings to IoT. An alarm rule (threshold, rate of change or anomaly) raises an alarm when a reading leaves its range.

  2. 02
    MES Production

    Operators report pieces, defects and breaks at the kiosk next to the machine. A critical IoT alarm appears as an Andon alert on the board.

  3. 03
    MES Production

    MES calculates OEE from the downtime, scrap and pieces it recorded. Every screen uses the same OEE definition.

  4. 04
    KPI / Analytics

    Every hour MES sends OEE, availability, performance and quality to KPI / Analytics, where you set targets and alert rules.

What you can see and do

  • OEE per station and for the plant, built from recorded downtime, scrap and pieces.
  • Open Andon alerts that you acknowledge, resolve or escalate.
  • OEE against its target, with an alert when it crosses the rule's threshold.

What IRIS does not do here

  • MES does not connect to machine controllers. Machine data arrives as events from IoT and Data Bridge.
  • IoT does not read OPC UA or Modbus itself. An external gateway forwards that data over MQTT.
  • MES does not calculate order delay. APS does.

Maintenance from Andon call to work order

The problem in the plant

A machine stops, the operator tells the foreman, the foreman calls maintenance, and the work order gets written at the end of the shift.

What happens in IRIS

  1. 01
    MES Production

    The operator presses Andon at the kiosk or reports a breakdown. MES records the downtime.

  2. 02
    CMMS

    CMMS opens a corrective work order from the Andon call or the breakdown report and writes the source in the work order log.

  3. 03
    CMMS

    A technician takes the work order, reports time and costs, and closes it. CMMS sends the end of the downtime back to MES.

  4. 04
    CMMS

    The person who accepts the work signs off with their own IRIS account and password. A kiosk PIN is not enough for the sign-off.

What you can see and do

  • Work orders with status, priority, owner and history for each machine.
  • MTBF in machine operating hours and MTTR in clock hours.
  • Preventive schedules that create work orders without duplicating open ones.

What IRIS does not do here

  • An IoT alarm opens a work order only after you switch that path on for the plant. It is off by default.
  • Downtime length alone does not open a work order. CMMS starts from an Andon call, a breakdown or an inspection finding.
  • CMMS does not pick the technician by skills. You choose one from a list.

Quality loop from NCR to CAPA

The problem in the plant

An operator finds a defect, and the nonconformity report (NCR) is typed later from memory, if at all.

What happens in IRIS

  1. 01
    MES Production

    The operator reports the defect at the kiosk, or someone saves scrap above the plant's threshold on the Scrap & Rework screen.

  2. 02
    QMS

    QMS opens an NCR with the source, the order and the quantity. One event never opens a second NCR.

  3. 03
    QMS

    The quality engineer looks for the cause with 5 Why, Ishikawa or an 8D report attached to the record, then opens a CAPA.

  4. 04
    QMS

    If the plant turns it on in QMS settings, closing the NCR and confirming that a CAPA worked require an e-signature.

What you can see and do

  • Registers of NCRs, CAPAs and customer complaints, with status and change history.
  • A cost entry created from scrap saved in MES. It waits until someone enters a price.
  • Supplier corrective action requests (SCAR) next to the supplier's ratings.

What IRIS does not do here

  • QMS does not record the defect. The operator does that in MES, and QMS receives an NCR to handle.
  • Cost of poor quality covers only scrap saved on the Scrap & Rework screen, so totals can be lower than the real losses.
  • QMS does not judge quality from images. SPC and inspections use entered or received measurements.

Warehouse and material flow

The problem in the plant

Material arrives, but the shortage list, the purchase orders and the stock on the shelf sit in three different places.

What happens in IRIS

  1. 01
    MRP

    A run over a chosen horizon explodes the BOMs and subtracts available stock in WMS, open purchase orders and production orders confirmed by MES. What remains is the shortage.

  2. 02
    Procurement

    Each shortage appears in the buyer's inbox in Procurement. The buyer approves and sends the order. MRP does not buy.

  3. 03
    WMS

    WMS records the receipt and the putaway. Receiving a purchase order can create the receipt document with the status Scheduled. The QMS incoming inspection result decides what happens to the delivery.

  4. 04
    WMS

    Pickers work through pick lists on a tablet, with a route. Finished goods from MES arrive in WMS as a receipt.

What you can see and do

  • Available stock per SKU, which MRP reads on every run.
  • Every stock movement in one history, with cycle counts and pallets.
  • Stock accuracy and order lead time, sent to KPI / Analytics every hour.

What IRIS does not do here

  • WMS does not book carrier shipments. Labels and tracking run in test mode, and the tracking number shows it.
  • MRP gives the quantity to order, not the release date. The planner decides when.
  • WMS does not issue a goods issue document and does not sync stock with your ERP.

Energy use and ESG reporting

The problem in the plant

Energy and emission figures are collected from spreadsheets once a year, and nobody can say which line used what.

What happens in IRIS

  1. 01
    IoT

    The Utilities screen in IoT reads meters for energy, compressed air, water and more. Each meter has a unit, a tariff and, where relevant, a CO2 factor.

  2. 02
    ESG

    ESG records energy use for the period between meter readings. Water, compressed air and gases stay in IoT, because they are not energy.

  3. 03
    ESG

    When a production order closes in MES, ESG sums the line's energy for that time window, applies the emission factor and writes a calculated entry.

  4. 04
    ESG

    The energy advisor points to waste from measurements only: use per piece and idle load from MES stations, plus meter totals and cost.

What you can see and do

  • Energy by source and period, with the meter totals converted to kWh.
  • Emission entries marked calculated or measured, and goals tracked against their target.
  • A notice 30 days before an environmental permit expires.

What IRIS does not do here

  • ESG creates GRI and CDP reports. It refuses SASB, TCFD or IFRS S2 and CSRD or ESRS, and gives the reason.
  • Without a catalogue of emission factors, ESG calculates nothing and creates no entries.
  • Simulated readings never enter a report figure. ESG counts how many it rejected.

Planning and what-if

The problem in the plant

The plan lives in a spreadsheet, so a changed order or a stopped machine means rebuilding it by hand.

What happens in IRIS

  1. 01
    APS

    The planner keeps resources and a capacity calendar, then generates a schedule from MPS items. The goal is least delay, highest utilization or lowest cost.

  2. 02
    APS

    APS flags resources loaded above the plant's threshold and lists the components that will run short, using BOMs from MRP and stock from WMS.

  3. 03
    APS

    The planner copies the plan into a scenario, changes it and compares resource use and overlaps. The Line What-If calculator in Digital Twin shows a line's bottleneck and takt.

  4. 04
    MES Production

    The plan reaches the shop floor when a version is published. MES adds missing orders and updates dates and quantities. Orders already started stay as they are.

What you can see and do

  • A Gantt chart of the schedule, with entries you can move by hand.
  • Plan adherence, on-time and late entries, and active bottlenecks on the APS cockpit.
  • How many pieces you can promise in coming periods (ATP), from planned output and the demand forecast.

What IRIS does not do here

  • APS does not optimize the schedule. It sorts items by the chosen goal and gives each one the first free slot.
  • APS plans each item as one block on one resource. It does not split it into routing steps, plan people or check tool availability.
  • MES does not see a draft or a frozen plan. Only a published version reaches the shop floor.

Try one of these scenarios on your own data

Start a 14-day trial on your plant's data, or open the interactive demo with sample data.

Start 14-day trialInteractive demo