The Most Advanced MES
in the Fastener Industry
A digital transformation of how parts are quoted, made, traced, and shipped — built from the ground up at AMW.
Most fastener shops run 1990s software for 2026 customers.
Typical competitor floor
- Paper travelers walking with each lot
- QuickBooks or a 20-year-old ERP
- Excel for quoting and costing
- Cert PDFs scanned and emailed by hand
- Tooling life tracked in a notebook
What it costs the customer
- Days, not minutes, for a status update
- FAI / PPAP packages at the last second
- Recall scope = "every lot we shipped"
- DFARS evidence held together with email
- Zero real-time machine visibility
A Manufacturing Execution System built for the next decade.
An MES is the system of record for everything between a sales order and a shipped part — routing, materials, machines, tooling, quality, compliance, and the audit trail behind all of it.
AMW's MES is purpose-built for cold-headed nuts, locknuts, Swiss screw, and CNC fasteners — not bolted onto a generic ERP.
From sales order to shipped part — one digital thread.
ISA-95 data model
The standard global manufacturers use. Future-proof and built for scale beyond a single site.
AS9100 / DFARS / NIST
Traceability, melt-source verification, control-of-changes baked in — not added later.
AI augmentation layer
An on-floor copilot that reads certs, drafts CoCs, and answers in natural language.
Material genealogy from melt to shipped part.
What it does
- Mill cert + distributor cert with heat-number match
- MaterialSublot splits for partial coil consumption
- Lot identity preserved through plating & heat treat
- Recall scope answered in seconds
What sales can say
- "We can show you which mill made your steel."
- "DFARS evidence is automatic — not a fire drill."
- "Recall scope is precise, not blanket."
Material Receipt & Melt Source Verification
Heat-number-match enforced at receipt: mill cert + distributor cert tied together before a lot can move to Available. Mismatch = automatic Quarantine, not an email thread.
Digital production routing — paper travelers retire.
What changes on the floor
- Operators see the next op, not a smudged sheet
- Setups, run hours, downtime captured at the source
- Tooling assignments validated before run-start
- WIP location visible from any browser
What it unlocks
- Real-time order status — no phone call
- Shorter setup-to-first-good-part
- Honest scrap and yield data, by machine
- The data foundation analytics depends on
Sales Order Intake
SO header + lines, customer PO, requested date, material definition + revision lookup. Release to production triggers Work Order generation against the routing — no double-keying into a separate ERP.
Dispatch Board
Live work-order queue across the floor. Setups, due dates, machine load and operator assignment in one view. The plant manager's "where is everything?" question, answered before they ask.
Quality, FAI, PPAP — assembled live, not after the fact.
What the system does
- AS9102 First Article forms from the live data model
- PPAP packages compiled from production data
- Customer Concession workflow for AS9100 8.7.2
- CoCs rendered on demand, signed, audited
Why customers care
- FAI / PPAP with first shipment, not weeks later
- Concessions handled formally, not via email
- Aerospace-grade discipline on every nut
QC Final Inspection
Sample plan, gauge results, AS9102 FAI characteristics, pass/fail per attribute. Inspector signs once and the FAI form, the PPAP elements, and the lot's audit row all populate together.
NCR / MRB / Customer Concession
Nonconformance routed through Material Review Board with full disposition workflow. Customer Concession requests for AS9100 8.7.2 — formal, time-stamped, hash-chained — never an email thread.
Shipping & Certificate of Conformance
Pack list + CoC + DFARS / Section 232 evidence rendered from the live MES data, signed at ship, archived in the audit log. The CoC the customer receives is the same data the auditor sees.
Tooling lifecycle with tuned tool lives — not guesses.
What we track
- Every ToolInstance referenced in lot genealogy
- Tuned tool-life curves per part / material / machine
- Predictive replacement before in-process failure
- New-vs-existing tooling cost basis
Why it matters commercially
- Quoting accuracy — tooling cost is data, not a fudge
- Repeat orders priced honestly & quickly
- Customer-paid tooling amortized transparently
- Fewer "tool went down" surprises mid-run
The AMW machine fleet — instrumented and observable.
10B5
Up to 10mm wire. Light-duty workhorse for small nuts and locknut blanks.
14B6
Up to 14mm. Mid-range capacity for most commercial inch and metric programs.
19B6
Up to 19mm. Heavy-duty headed parts for OEM and structural applications.
19B_PF
Multi-station forming up to 21mm wire — premium parts, premium margins.
Plus 8 tappers feeding closing and nylon-insert ops — every machine logging cycles, downtime, and tool wear into the same MES the quoting engine reads from.
Header Operator Station
The view at a 19B6 or 14B6 setup: active job, lot identity, tooling assignments, run hours, scrap counter, and the next op already loaded. Built for shop-floor screens — not desk monitors.
Tapping Mosaic — 8 Stations Live
One screen showing all 8 tappers feeding closing and nylon-insert ops. Cycle time, tap life remaining, downtime reasons captured at the source — the data layer that makes honest yield analytics possible.
Append-only audit log — the foundation no competitor has.
What's logged automatically
- Every state transition (Sales / Production / NCR)
- Actor, role, timestamp, before / after values
- SHA-256 hash chain — tampering is visible
- AI-originated changes carry a Composite Signature
Standards we map to
- AS9100 8.5.6 — control of changes
- AS9100D 8.5.2.1 — identification & traceability
- NIST SP 800-171 — controlled unclassified info
- DFARS 252.225-7008/7009/7012
- ASTM F1470 — fastener verification testing
Compliance Dashboard
Live status across AS9100, DFARS, NIST 800-171, ASTM F1470 — pass/fail rollups by clause, flagged exceptions, and the audit-log links that prove every claim. Audit-ready every day, not the night before.
An AI copilot embedded directly in the MES.
What the copilot does
- OCRs and validates supplier certs, auto-quarantines mismatches
- Drafts CoCs, FAI summaries, shipping packets
- Answers natural-language questions on order status
- Flags genealogy gaps before they hit the customer
How it stays safe
- Phased AI promotion gates (Wave 3 = Jeff's call)
- Every AI action carries an AgentExecutionTrace
- AS9100 8.5.6 applies to AI parameter updates
- NIST SP 800-171 SMS / paging restrictions enforced
AI Governance Console
Every AI action — cert OCR, CoC draft, parameter suggestion — listed with its AgentExecutionTrace, promotion wave (1/2/3), reviewer, and audit signature. Wave 3 promotion stays Jeff's sole-Owner call.
Why no competitor catches up to this in three years.
What you can promise — and have us back you.
v1.0 is the start, not the destination.
Build baseline (in flight)
Genealogy, routing, FAI, tooling, telemetry, audit, AI copilot. AS9100 / DFARS / NIST live from day one.
Customer-facing surfaces
Customer portal for status, certs, FAI/PPAP. Supplier portal with EDI/ASN. Mobile shop floor.
Multi-site & certs
Postgres migration. CNC and Swiss Screw onto the platform. IATF 16949 / CMMC / ITAR readiness.
Most shops run someone else's playbook.
AMW wrote its own.
78 years of fastener expertise plus a purpose-built MES plus an AI augmentation layer no competitor can buy off the shelf. This is the moat. This is the pitch. Go sell it.