InFlow · Materials in motion — traced, timed.
InFlow material and WIP tracking
InFlow follows raw materials, work in progress, finished goods and shipments from the receiving dock to the production line to the outbound truck. It shows where every material is, how long it has been there and whether it will arrive in time, using the sensor that suits each material and its speed.
The material visibility gap
Your systems know what you ordered. Do they know where it is?
Your ERP or WMS holds the count, and cycle counts keep it honest. But a count is a snapshot. It won’t tell you that a lot has sat in a staging lane for six hours, that a replenishment run left late, or that a shipment is still on the dock while the truck waits.
Meanwhile tariffs reroute shipments, suppliers change, labor costs rise and inventory buffers shrink. Stock-outs hit harder, wrong shipments cost customer trust and manual scanning eats the labor budget. Losses from inaccurate, delayed or missing material data were estimated at more than $4 trillion worldwide in 2024.
InFlow connects every material event (received, moved, staged, consumed, shipped) into one live picture, with the right sensor for each material and each velocity.
Where is it?
Last-seen location of every pallet, case, lot, job and package.
How long has it been there?
Dwell time in staging lanes, between workstations and on the dock.
Will it arrive in time?
Replenishment and milk runs driven by actual consumption.
Can we trace it?
Lot and batch history ready for recalls, customers and auditors.
The power of outcomes
What customers measure after they deploy InFlow.
99.6%
average inventory accuracy
98%
improved productivity
0
wrong shipments
2 hrs
dock-to-desk delivery
Use cases
Every material in motion in your operation.
From a 2-liter chemical bottle to a 300-pound metal drum, from kanban consumables to closed-box shipments, InFlow uses the protocol that suits each material.
Goods & consumables
Finished goods, kanban and MRO consumables, lab supplies and consigned stock, counted without walking the aisles.
Parts & raw materials
Chemicals, components, drums, rolls and heavy parts: received, issued and traced to the lot, around the clock.
Shipments & milk runs
Outbound loads verified box by box, inbound packages delivered to the right desk, and milk runs tracked loop by loop.
Jobs & travelers
Jobs, travelers, job bins and line-side carts followed station to station, with dwell-time alerts before schedules slip.
Workflows
From inbound dock to outbound truck.
Six workflows, one live record of every material movement.
Receiving & put away
Enroll and label incoming items, match deliveries against ASNs, audit materials and update inventory automatically as items move into storage.
Pick, pack, ship
Locate the items for each order line, print labels and packing slips, audit open and closed boxes, and verify every pallet at the dock door.
Stock & cycle counts
Cycle counts at shelf, zone or aisle level with handheld, fixed or vehicle-mounted readers, plus shrinkage and stock-out detection.
Cross docking
Verify inbound pallets on receipt and again at the outbound dock door, so goods that move straight through reach the right shipment.
WIP visibility & milk-runs
Follow jobs, travelers and line-side carts between workstations with dwell-time alerts, and track milk-run loops with route adherence.
Production & material planning
Kanban and min-max replenishment, re-order triggers and lead-time learning, so planners see where flow slows down and can fix the process.
Alerts & reports
Know before the line stops.
Exception detection flags late, missing and misrouted material while there is still time to act.
Illustrative example: layout and data show the kind of alerts and reports you get.
- ReportPick rate accuracyEvery pick verified against the order, by line and by shift.
- ReportMaterial flow & throughput rateUnits per hour through each stage, against target.
- ReportOrder fulfilment time & accuracyFrom order release to truck, with on-time and right-first-time rates.
- ReportWIP inventory, congestion & heat mapsWhere jobs pile up on the line, before it stops.
- ReportDock to stock timeHow long goods wait between the dock door and the shelf.
- ReportSearch time for inventorySeconds instead of minutes to find any item.
- AlertWrong & short shipment alertsA wrong pallet or a missing case is caught at the door, not by the customer.
- AlertRoute & dwell-time violationCarts that wait too long and milk runs that skip a stop.
- ReportInventory aging & stock statusSlow movers, expiring lots and stock levels, by location.
Reports show the floor as it is now, not as of last night’s batch, and publish into your ERP, WMS, MES or Power BI.
Product capabilities
Everything a materials team needs, in one application.
Ten capability areas, for regulated and unregulated supply chains alike.
Inventory management
Autonomous cycle counts, shrinkage and stock-out detection.
Outbound shipment intelligence
Wrong-shipment prevention, dynamic prioritization, closed-box audits.
Receiving intelligence
ASN matching, material audits and carrier charge-back validation.
Milk run & container intelligence
Container loop optimization, dwell and loss monitoring, route adherence.
WIP & job tracking
Stage and dwell-time alerts and bottleneck predictions.
Lot & batch traceability
Recall identification and readiness, traceability gap alerts.
Replenishment intelligence
Min-max rules, re-order triggers and lead-time learning.
Reporting & analytics
Natural-language querying and demand forecasting.
Mobile & field capabilities
iOS and Android, offline operation, camera-based scanning and capture.
Integration & interoperability
REST API, Power BI, webhooks, SSO, LDAP, SAP, Oracle, WMS, MES.
The right technology for each material type
One sensor doesn’t fit every material.
A pallet on a yard tractor and a chemical bottle in a clean room need different sensors. InFlow picks the protocol, and the rules, that suit each material class and each velocity.
- Barcode & NFCLow-cost identity on the handhelds you already own, often the first step.
- UHF RFIDPallets, cases and boxes read at dock doors and portals without line of sight, plus bulk cycle counts.
- Bluetooth LEZone presence for line-side carts, job bins and high-value materials.
- UWBCentimeter-level position for heavy parts, carts and vehicles on the floor.
- GPS & LoRaWANMilk-run vehicles, trucks and yard inventory beyond your walls.
- VisionCamera-based context where tags alone can’t tell the whole story.
Customer stories
InFlow in the field.
Continental Floral Greens
Seasonal wreath production counted per worker and station across 15 assembly stations, with InThing’s WIP visibility solution and Zebra RFID readers, delivered with Redline Solutions.
1M+wreaths tracked per Christmas season
100%accuracy in total wreath count
99.7%production approval rate
6,000–7,000wreaths tracked daily
Cepheid
The molecular diagnostics company replaced pen-and-paper raw materials tracking in 18 R&D labs with InFlow’s RFID Grab-N-Go system, fully integrated with SAP in under 12 months. Scientists and chemists now get the materials they need at any hour.
In less than a year, our productivity savings skyrocketed — by over 1,000%!
Tom Healy, Director, Logistics Technology and Projects, Cepheid
1,000%+productivity gain across 18 R&D labs
28,000manual touchpoints eliminated annually
10,000material transfer forms eliminated each year
2,300labor hours saved in 9 months
How a project runs
From first call to rollout.
- DiagnoseWe walk your material flow from dock to line to truck, find where counts and reality drift apart, and pick the capture method per step.
- Pilot in weeksOne storeroom, one dock door or one line, running against a baseline you agree up front.
- Roll outMore docks, lines and sites, ERP, WMS or MES integration through EAI-Bridge, and support from our team. How projects run
Runs on the InThing platform
One platform underneath every product.
InFlow runs on the same platform as InVault and InStep. Trapeze refines raw sensor data into events, Visium delivers them on web, mobile and floor stations, and EAI-Bridge keeps ERP, WMS and MES systems up to date.
- Integrations
- SAP, Oracle, WMS, MES, Power BI, REST, webhooks
- Capture
- Handhelds, fixed and phased-array readers, dock doors, kiosks, forklift- and AGV-mounted readers
- Deployment
- On-premises, cloud or hybrid, from a single server to a high-availability cluster
Find your material blind spots
Bring your hardest material flow.
Thirty minutes with us, grounded in your supply chain: raw chemistry, WIP, returnable containers or closed-box shipments. We’ll suggest the sensor, the workflow and what a pilot should prove.