Case Study / Fortune 500 Manufacturer

From 10+ disconnected tools to one AI-powered portal

A global manufacturing company needed to consolidate decades of institutional knowledge, disconnected calculators, and compliance documentation into a single system their entire engineering team could use.

9
AI Widgets Built
0
Hallucinations
2wk
To Prototype
100%
Code Ownership
The Client

A global manufacturer with a knowledge problem

This Fortune 500 company operates manufacturing plants worldwide. Their engineering teams relied on a patchwork of disconnected tools, tribal knowledge, and dense compliance documentation that nobody fully understood.

Industry
Global Manufacturing
Fortune 500 company with plants across multiple continents
Company Size
Enterprise
Thousands of engineers across global operations
Engagement
Full Portal Build
Multi-phase, fixed-fee delivery with full code handoff
Timeline
Phased Delivery
Working prototype in 2 weeks, full build over multiple phases
The Challenge

Institutional knowledge was trapped everywhere

The engineering team was losing time, accuracy, and institutional knowledge every single day. The same problems kept showing up.

The Solution

One unified portal. Nine AI-powered widgets.

I built a single web portal that replaced the entire patchwork of disconnected tools. Every widget is grounded in the client's actual documentation, cites its sources, and refuses to invent answers.

🤖

Compliance Q&A Agent

Conversational AI that answers questions about the audit rubric in plain language, with citations to the source document.

📊

Score Calculator

Automated scoring tool that replaces manual Excel-based calculations with validated, repeatable results.

📋

Criteria Explorer

Interactive tool for browsing every rubric criterion, understanding what's required, and seeing the evidence needed.

🔍

Gap Analysis Tool

Identifies where plants fall short and generates specific, actionable improvement recommendations.

📖

Onboarding Guide

Self-serve knowledge base that lets new hires ramp up independently with accurate, sourced answers.

🎯

Plant Comparison

Side-by-side comparison of plant performance against rubric criteria for benchmarking and improvement planning.

📄

Document Generator

Produces formatted reports and evidence documentation from portal data for audit preparation.

🗂

Knowledge Library

Centralized, searchable repository of all structured knowledge captured from subject-matter experts.

⚙️

Admin Dashboard

Management interface for updating data, managing users, and monitoring system usage and accuracy.

The Process

How I built it: phased delivery

Every phase delivered independently usable value. The client saw working software in weeks, not months. No open-ended discovery. No slide decks pretending to be progress.

Week 1

Knowledge Capture

Deep-dive interviews with the subject-matter expert. Mapped her institutional knowledge into structured, machine-readable data. Identified the highest-value workflows to automate first.

Week 2

Prototype Sprint

Built a working prototype of the compliance Q&A agent grounded in their actual rubric. Demonstrated it live to the engineering team. Validated accuracy across 10 conversation scenarios.

Week 3-6

Portal Build

Expanded from one widget to the full 9-widget portal. Each widget deployed as it was completed so the team started using the system immediately while new features were still being built.

Week 7+

Handoff and Training

Full source code delivered to the client's IT team. Step-by-step deployment documentation. Training session for internal engineers. Zero vendor lock-in. They own everything.

The Transformation

Before and after

Before
  • Engineers bouncing between 10+ disconnected tools daily
  • Hours of 1:1 onboarding per new hire, for months
  • Compliance criteria buried in documents nobody read
  • One person's vacation stalled the entire team
  • Previous AI chatbot hallucinated and lost trust
  • Manual Excel calculators with no validation
  • Audit prep was a fire drill every time
After
  • One unified portal for everything the team needs
  • New hires self-serve from day one
  • Plain-language AI explains what auditors actually check
  • Expert knowledge captured and available 24/7
  • Zero hallucinations across all testing scenarios
  • Automated, validated calculations with audit trails
  • Audit prep is continuous, not a scramble
The Results

By the numbers

9
AI-Powered Widgets
Each one replacing a disconnected tool or manual process
0
Hallucinations
Tested across 10 conversation scenarios including edge cases
2wk
To Working Prototype
From kickoff to live demo with the engineering team
100%
Code Ownership
Full source code and documentation delivered to client
0
Vendor Lock-in
Client's IT team can modify, extend, and deploy independently
1
Unified Portal
Replaced dozens of disconnected tools and manual processes

"The knowledge was always there. It was just trapped in one person's head and buried in documents nobody read. Now it's available to everyone, 24/7."

Katie Dickieson, AI Workflow Architect

Engineering Principles

Why it actually works

Most enterprise AI fails because it's built wrong. Here are the engineering decisions that made this system trustworthy.

Principle 01

Grounded, Not Generative

Every AI response is anchored to the client's actual documentation. The system cites its sources and refuses to invent answers that aren't in the data.

Principle 02

Guardrails Built In

Off-topic questions are redirected. Ambiguous queries ask for clarification. The system escalates to a human when it doesn't know. No guessing.

Principle 03

Tested Like Software

Every AI agent was tested against real conversation scenarios including trick questions, edge cases, and attempts to make it hallucinate. Zero failures.

Principle 04

Deliberately Boring Stack

Next.js, TypeScript, Claude API, Supabase. No proprietary frameworks. No magic. The client's IT team can read, modify, and deploy every line of code.

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