CALCULATOR
GIVEAWAY MATHS
From fill target, observed mean and variance to an annual number, with the compliance constraint modelled properly rather than assumed away.
RESOURCES
Useful even
if you never
buy from us.
Practical material for plants evaluating manufacturing autonomy: how to compute your own giveaway number, what to record before any automation project, how to write actuation envelopes, and what to ask every AI vendor including this one.
0GATED PDFs
6RESOURCES
REUSABLETEMPLATES
VENDORNEUTRAL
Shrink the variance and the mean can follow it down.
GIVEAWAY MATHSBASELINE CHECKLISTENVELOPE TEMPLATEVENDOR QUESTIONSARCHITECTURE BRIEFROI MODEL
THE LIBRARY
Six things worth taking
CHECKLIST
BASELINE CHECKLIST
What to record before any automation project so that afterwards you can prove what changed and defend it.
TEMPLATE
ENVELOPE TEMPLATE
A structure for defining actuation limits per parameter, per formula and per vessel, with approval fields built in.
CHECKLIST
VENDOR QUESTIONS
Twenty questions to ask any vendor proposing AI in a GMP workflow. Ask us all of them first.
BRIEFING
ARCHITECTURE BRIEF
The Serumon deployment architecture and data flows, written for IT, OT and security reviewers rather than for buyers.
MODEL
ROI MODEL
The spreadsheet logic we use to size a pilot business case, including the ramp period where savings are honestly zero.
GIVEAWAY MATHS
Run the number on your own line
Take your target fill, your observed mean fill and your unit volume. The difference between mean and target, multiplied by volume, is product you are giving away.
The interesting part is the safety margin: it exists because of variance, not generosity. Reduce variance and the margin can shrink without touching the compliance floor. That is the whole thesis of fill-weight autonomy.
- Giveaway % = (mean fill − target) ÷ target.
- Annual loss = giveaway % × annual volume × product cost.
- Safety margin is set by variance, not by policy.
- Reducing variance is the only honest way to lower the mean.
WORKED EXAMPLE
- TARGET
- 50.0 g
- MEAN
- 51.3 g
- GIVEAWAY
- 2.6%
- UNITS / YEAR
- 18,000,000
- PRODUCT GIVEN
- 23.4 TONNES
- VALUE (ILLUSTRATIVE)
- $0.4M–$1.6M
BASELINE CHECKLIST
Record this before you automate anything
QUALITY EVENTS
Shade holds, re-shading passes, broken emulsions, scrapped batches and quality escapes, per SKU family, for at least six months.
FILL PERFORMANCE
Target, mean and standard deviation per head and per format, plus reject rates and underfill incidents.
TIME
Changeover hours, clean cycles, vessel occupancy and hold days from production to release.
COST
Raw-material value per batch, re-work labour, and the cost of a late failure after distribution.
DATA AVAILABILITY
Which tags exist, at what resolution, retained for how long, and whether anyone has ever queried them.
DECISION OWNERS
Who currently makes each call, on what basis, and what would have to be true for them to delegate it.
VENDOR QUESTIONS
Four questions that separate real from theatre
-
01
SHOW ME A DECISION RECORD
Ask to see one full record: observation, prediction, confidence, proposal, envelope, approver, model version and outcome. Vagueness here is disqualifying.
-
02
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN IT IS WRONG?
Ask for the escalation behaviour, the confidence threshold and the safe-state path. "It has high accuracy" is not an answer.
-
03
WHAT IS ASPIRATIONAL?
Ask which capabilities are validated in production versus in simulation versus on a slide. Any honest vendor has all three categories.
-
04
HOW DO I REPLAY A BATCH?
Ask them to replay a specific batch against the exact model version. If the answer is a log export, there is no audit trail.
BRIEFINGS
For each audience
PLANT DIRECTOR
The economics: which losses are addressable, what a pilot costs, and what payback would have to look like to be credible.
PROCESS ENGINEER
The control detail: state estimation, envelopes, MPC behaviour and what happens when a sensor degrades.
QUALITY MANAGER
Validation approach, audit design, ISO 22716 alignment and the evidence pack an inspector would see.
IT / OT SECURITY
Network segmentation, egress policy, credential scoping, break-glass access and incident commitments.
GLOSSARY
Terms used across this site
| TERM | MEANING |
|---|---|
| ΔE (Delta E) | A numeric measure of perceived colour difference between a batch and its brand standard |
| Giveaway | Product filled above target weight to guarantee the legal minimum, given away for free at scale |
| Envelope | The approved minimum, maximum and rate limits within which an agent may move a parameter |
| Right-first-time | The share of batches that meet specification without re-work or correction |
| Shadow mode | The agent predicts and records but writes nothing to equipment |
| Bounded autonomy | The agent acts alone inside validated envelopes and escalates anything outside them |
| ISO 22716 | The cosmetics Good Manufacturing Practice standard |
| Digital twin | A simulated model of the make-and-fill process used to predict outcomes before a batch runs |
RESOURCE POLICY
How we publish
NOEMAIL WALLS
NOTRACKING PIXELS
YESREUSE ALLOWED
YESVENDOR-NEUTRAL
THE PACK
What arrives when you ask
Request the resource pack and you get the calculators, checklists, templates and the architecture briefing as plain files, sent by a human, with no automated sequence following you around the internet afterwards.
If you want the deeper deployment documentation, that goes under NDA because it contains equipment and security detail.
- Giveaway and ROI models as spreadsheets.
- Baseline and vendor-question checklists.
- Envelope template.
- Architecture briefing for IT, OT and security.
- No marketing automation attached.
PACK CONTENTS
- CALCULATORS
- 2
- CHECKLISTS
- 2
- TEMPLATES
- 1
- BRIEFINGS
- 4
- GATING
- NONE
- DELIVERY
- BY A HUMAN
RESOURCES FAQ
Using this material
Yes, entirely. The calculators and checklists are deliberately vendor-neutral, and using them to conclude that you do not need Serumon yet is a legitimate outcome.
Please do. A market where plants ask better questions of every AI vendor is a market we are happy to compete in.
Workshops for design partners and enterprise customers on baseline measurement, envelope definition and validation approach. Broader training programmes are [ASPIRATIONAL].
English only at present. Translations are prioritised by design-partner geography [ASPIRATIONAL].
TAKE IT
Get the resource pack
No form-fill sequence, no drip campaign. Tell us who you are and what you are trying to fix, and a human sends the files.