AI Automation for Manufacturing
Stop losing production hours to paperwork.
Elk Grove Village alone has 3,800+ businesses. Across the Greater Chicago area, thousands of manufacturers burn 10-20 hours a week typing invoices, POs, and quality reports into ERP systems. We build AI that does it in seconds.
The Challenge
Where manufacturing businesses lose time every day.
Invoice & PO Processing
Every supplier invoice and purchase order gets manually keyed into your ERP. Vendor name, line items, quantities, amounts — one field at a time. A single transposition error means hours of reconciliation at month-end. Your bookkeeper or office manager spends their afternoons on this instead of the work that actually grows your business.
Quality Documentation
Inspection reports, first-article inspection forms, material certifications, and compliance documents pile up in binders and filing cabinets. When a customer audit or ISO review comes around, someone has to dig through physical files. Finding a specific cert from six months ago can take an hour.
Shop Floor to Office Gap
Data generated on the shop floor — machine outputs, quality readings, production counts — rarely makes it into your business systems in real time. Someone writes it on a clipboard, walks it to the office, and types it in later. Or it doesn't get entered at all.
Vendor Communication Chaos
Quote requests, order confirmations, change notices, and delivery updates scattered across email inboxes. No single source of truth. When a vendor says they confirmed a ship date, nobody can find the email. When pricing changes, it takes a week for everyone to know.
Our Solutions
Automation built for how manufacturing actually works.
Intelligent Document Extraction
Our AI reads invoices, purchase orders, packing slips, and quality reports — extracting every field you need. Data is structured, validated against your master records, and ready for your ERP. No manual entry. No import files.
- Handles invoices, POs, BOLs, inspection forms, and custom documents
- Reads scans, photos, PDFs, and email attachments
- Validates extracted data against your vendor list, part numbers, and open orders
Direct ERP Integration
Extracted data flows directly into QuickBooks, SAP Business One, NetSuite, JobBOSS, E2 Shop System, or whatever you run. Entries appear as if your team typed them — with full audit trail. No rekeying. No CSV imports. No Monday morning backlog.
- Works with QuickBooks, SAP B1, NetSuite, JobBOSS, E2, Epicor, and more
- Creates invoices, POs, receiving records, and quality entries automatically
- Exception handling routes problems to the right person for review
Quality Record Digitization
Paper inspection forms are scanned, read by AI, and filed digitally with full search capability. First-article reports, dimensional inspections, material certs — all searchable, all linked to the right job and part number. Audit-ready at any moment.
- Converts paper quality forms to structured digital records
- Links records to jobs, parts, and customers automatically
- Full-text search across all historical quality data
Email & Document Routing
Incoming vendor emails are read, classified, and routed. Quote requests go to purchasing. Ship notifications update your receiving calendar. Price changes flag the right buyer. Your inbox becomes organized without anyone organizing it.
- Classifies emails by type: quotes, confirmations, changes, inquiries
- Extracts key data and routes to appropriate team members
- Creates tasks and calendar entries from vendor communications
How It Works
Real automation workflows for manufacturing.
Supplier Invoice → ERP Entry
- 1Invoice arrives via email or is scanned at your office
- 2AI extracts vendor, invoice number, line items, quantities, and amounts
- 3System validates against open POs and flags discrepancies
- 4Matched invoices post automatically to your accounting system
- 5Exceptions route to your AP person with the discrepancy highlighted
Quality Inspection → Digital Record
- 1Inspector fills out form on the shop floor (paper or tablet)
- 2Document is scanned or uploaded
- 3AI reads measurements, pass/fail results, part numbers, and operator notes
- 4Record is filed digitally, linked to the job and customer
- 5Out-of-spec readings trigger immediate alerts to quality manager
Customer PO → Work Order
- 1Customer PO arrives via email
- 2AI extracts part numbers, quantities, delivery dates, and special instructions
- 3System cross-references inventory and production capacity
- 4Work order is created in your ERP with all details populated
- 5Acknowledgment email is drafted for your review before sending
Real Results
Numbers that matter.
Why Node Harbor
We're your neighbors, not a remote vendor.
The Elk Grove Village industrial park is one of the largest in North America — over 3,800 businesses on 5.8 square miles. Add the manufacturing clusters in Addison, Wood Dale, Bensenville, and Itasca, and you're looking at one of the densest concentrations of small and mid-sized manufacturers in the country. These shops build precision parts, package food products, fabricate metal, and injection-mold plastic — and nearly every one of them still processes invoices and quality docs by hand. We're based in Elk Grove Village. We've walked these shop floors. We understand that a 15-person machine shop doesn't need a million-dollar ERP overhaul — they need someone to make the data entry go away so their office manager can do something that actually matters.
FAQ
Common questions about manufacturing automation.
Ready to eliminate the paperwork?
30 minutes. No commitment. We'll review your current document workflows and identify the highest-impact automation opportunities for your manufacturing operation.
Based in Elk Grove Village, IL — serving the entire O'Hare corridor and Chicago western suburbs.