HeatLock

How it works

Built around the load, not the order

This is the structural difference, and it is the one that decides whether the software fits the shop or the shop works around the software.

The model

A charge is not an order, and an order is not a charge

A generic ERP models an order, moves it through operations, and treats the furnace as a resource the order occupies for a while. That works for machining. It breaks immediately in heat treat, because the furnace does not process orders — it processes charges, and a charge is assembled from whatever fits together at the same temperature under the same recipe.

So the relationship is many-to-many in both directions at once, and both directions have to be first-class.

One load, several customersThree order lines — from Cascade Aerostructures, Vantage Rotorcraft Group and Northlake Precision Machining — converge into a single furnace load, LD-03142.A · Many order lines → one load145-32904-011 Rev BCascade Aerostructures · 160 pcD8829-441 Rev BVantage Rotorcraft Group · 90 pcD8829-455 Rev AVantage Rotorcraft Group · 130 pcLD-03142 · Vacuum Unit 1HT-174-H900 — 17-4PH Age H900380 pieces · one charge · one cycle
One order line, several loadsA single order line passes through a harden load and then a separate temper load, each recorded independently.B · One order line → many loads145-32871-003Compressor disk · 120 pcHarden1550° · LD-03140Temper1000° · separate chargeEach load carries its own furnace, its own pyrometry, its own sign-offs.

Model it any other way and the shop ends up keeping the truth in a spreadsheet beside the system: which parts were actually in the furnace together, and which of a line's pieces went through which charge. That spreadsheet is the thing an auditor eventually asks to see.

Pricing

Per piece, per pound, or per load

Heat treat is quoted three different ways, often by the same shop on the same day, and sometimes with a lot minimum underneath. Per piece for small hardware, per pound for bulk, per load for a furnace someone has effectively booked.

Rates resolve from the line, then the customer's price list, and arefrozen onto the order when applied — so an invoice bills the basis that was quoted, not whatever the price list says months later. Per-pound work converts through real units, which is why a 200 kg line bills as 440.92 lb rather than a rounded guess.

HeatLock price lists: four customers priced per piece, per load and per pound, each with a lot minimum and optional tiers
Four customers, three pricing bases, each with its own lot minimum — and tiers where volume earns a different rate.

Traceability

From mill heat to certificate, in one search

Because the load is a real object rather than a note, the chain joins up without anyone maintaining it. Search a lot number, a mill heat, a part, an order or a customer, and the whole path comes back: what was received, which charges it ran in, the cycle actuals and pyrometry for each, what was tested, and which certificate it left on.

This is the question that arrives by phone on a Friday afternoon — which of our parts were in that furnace — and it should take a search box, not an afternoon.

HeatLock traceability result for lot L-24-1221: receiving, the load with its pyrometry, hardness test and issued certificate
One lot number returns the whole chain — receiving, the load it ran in with its frozen pyrometry, the hardness result, and the certificate it shipped on.

See it against your own work

Bring a real order that ran through two furnaces, and we'll trace it end to end in the demo.

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