A customer reports a dead unit. What can I actually find out?

Ask Alan for the serial. You get the hardware revision, the build run and when each stage was passed, the ship date, carrier and tracking, the order, and the customer. Then ask which other units came from the same run and where they went, so you know the blast radius before you reply.

How do hardware revisions work?

Each revision is its own part (ER01 and ER02), with its own BOM. A serial belongs to exactly one revision, so it pins which design and which components are inside the unit.

Do operators have to type serials by hand?

No. Paste a list, scan them at the bench, or generate a batch from a prefix: ER-2401- with a run of 5 gives ER-2401-0001 through ER-2401-0005.

Does this slow the floor down?

Stages are one tap on the run, and serials are registered once per run and once at ship time. That is the whole overhead, and it replaces the serial log nobody kept up.

What happens to serials when the run completes?

The finished units become sellable stock, each carrying its serial history. Serials stay attached through shipment, so the history keeps growing instead of getting re-keyed.

Run the shop

Every serial, from bench to customer.

Turn on serial tracking for a product, define its build stages, and the trace fills itself in as the run moves down the line. At ship time each serial ties to the carrier tracking, the order, and the customer. Then ask Alan where ER-2401-0002 went and the full unit history comes back in one message.

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The new way

How this works in the future of MRP.

The old way is a serials tab in a spreadsheet that is three builds behind, and when a unit comes back dead you spend a Saturday cross-referencing packing slips to work out which revision it was and who else got units from that run. Here the trace fills itself in as the floor works: stages get ticked, serials get scanned, the shipment ties each unit to a tracking number and a customer. When the question comes, you ask Alan and the answer is one message.

How it works

Step 1: turn it on and name your stages

On the product, turn on Track serial numbers and define the build stages your floor actually walks: kitted, programmed, assembled, QA passed, packed. The stages are yours to name, and each hardware revision (ER01, ER02) is its own part with its own BOM, so a serial pins exactly what went into the unit.

Step 2: the run ticks stages and registers serials

On the build run, operators tick stages off as the run moves down the line. Serials get registered once per run: paste a list, scan them at the bench, or generate them from a prefix (ER-2401- with a run of 5 gives ER-2401-0001 through 0005). When the run completes, the units land in sellable stock carrying their serial history.

Step 3: serials ride the shipment

At ship time, scan or paste the serials going in the box into the shipment dialog. Each unit is now tied to the shipment (carrier, tracking number, customs docs), the customer order, and the customer. There is no serial log to update afterward: attaching the serials is the log.

Step 4: ask Alan, get the whole story

Ask “where did ER-2401-0002 go?” in the web sidebar or in Slack. Alan answers with the full unit history: product and hardware revision, build run and stage dates, ship date, carrier and tracking, order, customer. It works the other way too: “which units went to Lakeshore Industries?” lists every serial they have.

Common questions

A customer reports a dead unit. What can I actually find out?: Ask Alan for the serial. You get the hardware revision, the build run and when each stage was passed, the ship date, carrier and tracking, the order, and the customer. Then ask which other units came from the same run and where they went, so you know the blast radius before you reply.
How do hardware revisions work?: Each revision is its own part (ER01 and ER02), with its own BOM. A serial belongs to exactly one revision, so it pins which design and which components are inside the unit.
Do operators have to type serials by hand?: No. Paste a list, scan them at the bench, or generate a batch from a prefix: ER-2401- with a run of 5 gives ER-2401-0001 through ER-2401-0005.
Does this slow the floor down?: Stages are one tap on the run, and serials are registered once per run and once at ship time. That is the whole overhead, and it replaces the serial log nobody kept up.
What happens to serials when the run completes?: The finished units become sellable stock, each carrying its serial history. Serials stay attached through shipment, so the history keeps growing instead of getting re-keyed.

Related features

Shipping labels

Where serials pick up their carrier and tracking.

Alan, the AI operator

Ask where any serial went, from Slack or the sidebar.

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Last updated 2026-07-13