1. What this audit measures
Five numbers, each chosen because you can check it against your own floor in under a minute and know immediately whether it rings true. Counted together they tell you where your plant actually sits: how much of the week is data a system holds, and how much is still handwriting waiting for someone to re-type it.
They are the same five questions inside the AI Readiness Assessment. This page is the long version you walk in person. The assessment is the two-minute version that scores it for you.
What counts as a capture point
A capture point is any place a person writes something down that later has to become data: a batch sheet, a quality check, a traveler, a rounds log, a downtime note, a shift handoff. Count each one where it is first written, not everywhere it later gets copied. The count matters more than the page count, because each capture point is a separate decision about whether that record ever reaches a system at all.
A few rules so your own count stays honest
- Count active records only. What actually gets filled in during a normal production week, not the binder of forms nobody has touched in a year.
- Count at the origin. If the same number is written on paper and later keyed into the ERP, that is one paper capture point plus one re-keying task. It is not digital just because it eventually lands in a system.
- Time it against a real example. When you measure how old a number is, pull an actual record and check it, rather than trusting what the process document claims.
- Walk it with a line lead. The person at the station knows which clipboard is real and which screen everyone ignores. An office map of the plant misses both.
2. Why this matters before you buy AI
Manufacturing software is sold as though the data already exists. The pitch assumes a plant with records in systems, machines that report, and numbers that are current. The capture points on most floors tell a different story: much of the week still starts as handwriting at a station, and the software layer meets it only after somebody re-types it.
That gap is what this audit measures, and it matters commercially, because an agent that cannot read the record cannot act on the record. A copilot answering from a system that holds a third of the week gives confident answers about a third of the plant. So the honest first question is not which AI to buy. It is how much of your floor an AI could see today.
We are not going to quote you an industry-wide percentage here, because the only number that changes your decision is the one you are about to count on your own floor.
The five things to count
Each card is one metric: what to count, what the number is telling you, and a line to write yours. The printable worksheet at the bottom puts all five on one page you can carry onto the floor.
Metric 01 · Paper capture points
Count every distinct handwritten record in active use on the floor: batch sheets, quality checks, travelers, rounds, downtime logs, handoffs.
What it tells you: how many separate places your week begins as paper. Each one is invisible to any system until a person types it in.
Your number:
Metric 02 · Data latency
For the numbers you rely on, sort them by how long until someone outside the station can see them: live, same shift, next day, month end.
What it tells you: the ceiling on how proactive you can be. You cannot correct a run you only hear about at month end.
Your number:
Metric 03 · Machine data escape rate
Asset by asset, the share of your machines whose data leaves the controller at all: counts, states, faults, cycle times reaching anything beyond the panel.
What it tells you: how much of what your machines already know is actually usable. Most already measure. Few let the number out.
Your number:
Metric 04 · Re-keying hours per week
Add up staff hours spent typing numbers that already exist somewhere else: the supervisor rebuilding the daily report, the planner re-entering the sequence, quality transcribing a check sheet, the office keying a PO.
What it tells you: the most legible cost on the list, because it converts straight into a budget conversation.
Your number:
Metric 05 · Trace time
Time one real one-lot trace, from question to evidence, on an actual lot rather than what the SOP says.
What it tells you: the single most honest test of whether your records are connected, because a trace has to cross receiving, production, quality and shipping in one pass.
Your number:
Each of these five is a question in the AI Readiness Assessment. If you would rather have it scored for you than walk it by hand, take the two-minute version first and come back for the walk.
3. Paper by the numbers
Metric 01 summary · Paper capture points
Count it yourself- How to count it
- Walk the floor and tally each active handwritten record at the station where it is written. One tally per capture point, not per page.
- What a low number looks like
- Most records already start in a system or off a machine. Paper survives only where a glove or a wash-down demands it.
- What a high number looks like
- The week begins on paper at most stations, and your systems hold mostly what someone found time to key in later.
A capture point is any place where a person writes something down that later has to become data. The count matters more than the page count, because each capture point is a separate decision about whether that record ever reaches a system.
The record families that survive longest on paper tend to survive for a practical reason rather than a cultural one: at the point of use, paper is faster. A clipboard needs no login, works in a glove, survives a wash-down, and never waits on a network. Any digitization that ignores that loses to the clipboard. This is why the work is done at the station rather than designed in an office.
4. The latency tax
Metric 02 summary · Data latency
Count it yourself- How to count it
- For each record you act on, note how long until someone outside the station could look it up. Sort into live, same shift, next day, month end.
- What good looks like
- The numbers you run the plant on are live or same shift. The morning meeting is about now, not about yesterday.
- What bad looks like
- Most numbers are next day or month end, so every meeting is a report on something already finished.
Latency is the distance between something happening on the floor and anyone outside the station being able to see that it happened. It sets a hard ceiling on how proactive a plant can be, because you cannot correct a run you only learn about at month end. A plant on next-day numbers runs a morning meeting about yesterday, which is a report, not a control loop.
The cost of that gap is arithmetic a plant can run on its own inputs rather than on ours. The Downtime Cost Calculator prices the stops, and the full set is at ROI Calculators & Tools. Those are your numbers, produced on your own floor.
5. Machine data: measured but stranded
Metric 03 summary · Machine data escape rate
Count it yourself- How to count it
- Asset by asset, mark whether any data leaves the controller: counts, states, faults, cycle times reaching anything beyond the panel. Count the machines, then the share.
- What good looks like
- Most assets already push their data somewhere a person or a system can read without standing at the machine.
- What bad looks like
- The machines know their numbers and always have, but the numbers stop at the panel where nothing else can read them.
This is the one that surprises people. Most machines already know. They know their counts, their states, their faults, and their cycle times, and they have known them for years. What is missing is not instrumentation. It is the path off the machine.
The controller brands we encounter most are Rockwell/Allen-Bradley, Siemens, Omron, and Mitsubishi, and on all of them the data is reachable at the PLC over OPC UA. So the common case is not a plant that cannot measure. It is a plant whose measurements stop at the panel, where nothing else can read them.
6. The re-keying line item
Metric 04 summary · Re-keying hours per week
Count it yourself- How to count it
- Ask each role how many hours a week they spend typing numbers that already exist somewhere else, then watch a few of those tasks to sanity-check the answer.
- Turn it into a year
- Once the weekly hours are real, the annual figure follows directly, and that is the version you take upstairs. Do not multiply a guess by fifty-two, because that just produces a more confident guess.
Re-keying is the most legible number in the audit, because it converts directly into a budget conversation. It is staff hours spent typing numbers that already exist somewhere else: the supervisor rebuilding the daily report, the planner re-entering the sequence, the quality tech transcribing a check sheet, the office keying a PO.
Once the weekly figure is measured, the annual figure follows from it directly, and that is the version a plant manager can take upstairs. We are not publishing an annualized number before the weekly one is counted, because multiplying a guess by fifty-two just produces a more confident guess.
7. Trace time under pressure
Metric 05 summary · Trace time
Count it yourself- How to count it
- Pick one real lot and trace it end to end, from question to evidence, on the clock. Do not rehearse it. The first honest attempt is the number.
- What good looks like
- Minutes, from a screen, without leaving your chair.
- What bad looks like
- Hours or days, spent on phone calls and in binders, with the answer only as good as the handwriting.
Trace time is the most honest single test of whether records are connected, because a trace has to cross receiving, production, quality, and shipping in one pass. Anything disconnected shows up immediately as a phone call or a binder.
What a trace is now expected to take is not a matter of opinion. Under the FDA Food Traceability Rule, which implements section 204 of the Food Safety Modernization Act, covered firms must make required traceability records available to an authorized FDA representative within 24 hours of a request, and during an outbreak, recall, or other public health threat must provide the required information in an electronic sortable spreadsheet within that same window.
Public research Source: 21 CFR 1.1455, paragraphs (c)(1) and (c)(3)(ii), FDA Food Traceability Rule.
Read that against a plant whose lot history lives in binders. The rule does not care how the record was captured, only how fast it can be produced and whether it arrives sortable. A paper trace can meet neither condition reliably, and customers increasingly ask for the same thing on a shorter clock than the regulator does.