We don't sell cameras. We sell the elimination of Internal and External Failure costs on the left side of your P&L.

Scrap, sorting, rework, in-process rejects → caught at the line before they become chargebacks or recalls.

Warranty, recalls, penalties, brand damage → prevented entirely when defects never ship.

The math: $X in UnitX (Prevention) saves 10X in COPQ (Failure).

OEMs run the highest volume, highest complexity lines in manufacturing. A single defect that escapes to a recall can cost $1B+. Quality failure is an existential event — not a line item.

COPQ range: 15–20% of sales. At Toyota Georgetown (~500K vehicles/yr at ~$35K ASP), that's $2.6B+ in annual quality cost exposure.

Signal to watch: NHTSA recall filings, warranty accrual increases in 10-K filings, OEM supplier quality scorecards (SCAR notices).

Alabama: Mercedes-Benz Vance (GLE/GLS/EV) · Honda Lincoln · Mazda Toyota Huntsville · Hyundai Montgomery

Georgia: Kia West Point · Hyundai Metaplant Ellabell · Rivian Jefferson

Tennessee: Nissan Smyrna · VW Chattanooga · GM Spring Hill · Ford BlueOval City Stanton

South Carolina: BMW Spartanburg (#1 BMW plant globally)

Kentucky: Toyota Georgetown · Ford Louisville Assembly + Truck

Mississippi: Nissan Canton · Toyota Blue Springs

Opening signal: NHTSA recall or SCAR notice targeting an OEM plant in your territory.

Who to call: VP/Director of Quality, Plant Quality Manager, Manufacturing Engineering Director.

The pitch: "I saw [recall/complaint]. At [OEM]'s volume, each $5 defect that escapes has a $1B recall potential. We can cut false acceptance to zero on [specific line]."

Ask for: Site walk to map current inspection points. One line POC with measurable scrap/rework baseline.

PPM (Parts Per Million defective) — OEMs demand supplier PPM in single digits. Even 10 PPM on a 500K vehicle/yr line = 5,000 defective components.

First Pass Yield (FPY) — percentage of units built right the first time. 1% FPY improvement on a 500K-unit line = 5,000 units not reworked.

Warranty Accrual Rate — disclosed in 10-K. Rising rate = quality degrading. Industry healthy range: <1.5% of sales. Troubled: >3.5%.

SCAR (Supplier Corrective Action Request) — formal notice from OEM to supplier. A SCAR is a FIRE signal — call within 48 hours.

Battery cell and pack inspection is the highest-stakes inspection problem in automotive history. A single thermal runaway defect in an EV battery can cause a $10,000–$20,000 pack replacement and a catastrophic recall.

SE EV investments active now: CATL Kentucky · Toyota Battery NC Liberty ($13.9B) · Hyundai Metaplant GA · Rivian Jefferson GA · Ford BlueOval City TN

Every new EV facility needs inspection infrastructure built in from day one — greenfield plants are your easiest door. No legacy system to displace.

Tier 1 suppliers are squeezed from both sides: OEMs demand near-zero PPM while raw material costs rise and margins compress. Quality failure hits them twice — internal rework costs AND OEM chargebacks.

COPQ range: 15–20% of sales. A mid-size Tier 1 at $500M revenue carries $75–100M in annual quality cost exposure.

Chargebacks are direct cash penalties billed by OEMs for defective parts — immediate, contractual, and visible on the P&L. A chargeback notice is your single strongest FIRE signal.

Seating: Adient · Lear · Toyota Boshoku

Wiring/Electronics: Yazaki · Sumitomo · Aptiv · Denso

Chassis/Suspension: ZF · Magna · Gestamp (stamping)

Powertrain: BorgWarner · Cummins · Vitesco · AISIN

Body/Exterior: Plastic Omnium · Benteler · GKN Automotive

Safety: Autoliv · ZF (TRW) · Continental

Thermal: Hanon Systems · Denso · Valeo

Opening signal: OEM chargeback, SCAR notice, quality escape to an assembly plant, or rising scrap rate in their earnings release.

Who to call: Quality Director, Manufacturing Engineering, Plant Manager, VP Operations.

The pitch: "Your OEM customer is holding you to single-digit PPM. We eliminate false acceptance at the source — defects don't ship, chargebacks don't happen."

Scale play: Tier 1s run identical processes across multiple plants. One win replicates to every facility running the same line.

PPM to OEM — Tier 1 contractual PPM targets are typically 0–10 PPM. Any escape triggers a SCAR and potential chargeback.

Internal scrap rate — typically 0.5–3% of production. At high volumes even 0.5% is millions in wasted material annually.

OEM scorecard rating — most OEMs (Toyota, GM, Ford) publish monthly supplier quality scores. A declining score is a visible, urgent signal.

Rework labor hours — often the largest hidden COPQ. Workers reworking parts are not producing good parts. Fully loaded cost: $80–120/hr in SE plants.

Tier 1 suppliers are consolidating globally. When you win at one plant, the quality director can mandate the same solution across all facilities — that's the enterprise play.

Examples of scale in SE territory:

Yazaki has 8+ plants in the US. Autoliv has 6. Lear has 12. One design win with corporate quality sign-off cascades across every facility running the same part family.

Always qualify: "If this works here, what's your process for rolling it to your other facilities?" Get that answer before you scope the POC.

Tier 2 suppliers provide sub-components and raw materials to Tier 1 assemblers. They manufacture stampings, castings, fasteners, seals, bearings, wiring components, and raw materials that Tier 1 assembles into systems.

The Tier 2 quality problem: A defect at Tier 2 that reaches Tier 1 triggers a SCAR and line stop. The defect cost multiplies by 10x at each step — a $2 bad stamping becomes a $20 rework at Tier 1 and a $200 chargeback from the OEM.

COPQ range: 10–18% of sales — lower volume but high precision requirements.

Metal Stampings: Gestamp · Tower Automotive · Shiloh Industries

Castings: Nemak · Waupaca Foundry · Martinrea · Intermet (see Casting section)

Fasteners / Hardware: Illinois Tool Works (ITW) · Textron Fastening

Rubber / Seals: Parker Hannifin · Freudenberg · Trelleborg

Bearings: Schaeffler · NSK · Timken · SKF

Wire Harness Components: TE Connectivity · Amphenol · Molex

Aluminum / Steel: Novelis · Constellium · Nucor

Opening signal: A SCAR issued by a Tier 1 customer to the Tier 2 supplier. Tier 2 suppliers are often less sophisticated in quality systems — bigger opportunity to differentiate.

Who to call: Quality Manager, Plant Manager, Operations Director. Tier 2 companies often have a single decision-maker for quality investment.

The pitch: "Your Tier 1 customer sent you a SCAR. If you can't resolve it in 30 days they can source-switch. We can implement a zero-escape inspection cell in [timeframe] that eliminates the root cause."

Urgency driver: Source-switching threats are existential for small Tier 2 suppliers. The ROI conversation is easy — one averted SCAR pays for the system.

Casting is one of the highest-scrap manufacturing processes. Internal porosity, shrinkage defects, cold shuts, and surface defects are inherent to the process — and nearly impossible to catch with manual inspection at volume.

Typical scrap rates: 3–8% of production. At a foundry producing 10,000 castings/day at $50 avg cost, 3% scrap = $15,000/day in lost material = $5.4M/year.

The hidden cost: Scrap costs are the visible tip. Rework, re-inspection, furnace re-melt, and customer chargebacks for escapes can add 3–5x the visible scrap cost.

Nemak (Taylor, MI + SE plants) — aluminum engine blocks and cylinder heads. Your active DeteX target. Seth is the contact.

Waupaca Foundry (multiple plants) — largest iron casting company in North America. Active pipeline account — LOI stage.

Martinrea — aluminum structural castings for automotive lightweighting

Intermet — iron castings for driveline and chassis

Constellium — Muscle Shoals, AL — aluminum rolling and casting for automotive sheet

Cast-Rite — die casting for auto components

Opening question: "What is your current scrap rate as a percentage of production?" — Every casting plant knows this number and most are uncomfortable with it.

The COPQ calculation (live in discovery):
Daily output × scrap rate × unit cost = daily scrap cost
× 250 working days = annual scrap cost
× 4 (hidden cost multiplier) = total COPQ exposure

Who to call: Quality Manager, Plant Manager, VP Manufacturing. In casting, the Plant Manager often controls the quality budget directly.

The pitch: "We've reduced scrap rates by 40–60% at similar operations. At your volume, that's $[X]M back in your pocket annually."

Surface porosity — gas voids visible on machined surfaces. Manual inspection miss rate: 15–25% at speed.

Cold shuts — incomplete fusion lines where two metal flows didn't bond. Often invisible to the naked eye until machined.

Shrinkage cavities — internal voids from metal shrinkage during solidification. Require X-ray or CT scan — or caught via downstream machining scrap.

Flash / fins — excess metal at parting lines. 100% detectable with vision. Currently caught manually or found by the customer.

Dimensional non-conformance — profile and bore position errors caught at CMM but too late. Vision at the line catches before CMM queue.

Casting is the ideal IronCase use case. The ROI calculation is straightforward, the data is readily available (scrap logs, rework hours, customer chargeback records), and the financial justification writes itself.

Nemak case study potential: If the Taylor plant POC succeeds, a detailed COPQ/ROI analysis showing scrap reduction is the reference document that opens every other Nemak plant globally — 38 facilities across 16 countries.

Waupaca case study potential: Largest iron casting company in North America. A Waupaca win is a reference for every foundry in the country.

Win both. Document both. Use IronCase to build the financial model. Then take it national.

Electronics manufacturing runs at speeds and volumes where manual inspection is physically impossible. A PCB assembly line can produce 10,000+ boards per hour. Defects at that throughput rate become statistical certainties without automated inspection.

COPQ range: 5–10% of sales — lower than automotive but at massive volume. A $1B electronics manufacturer at 7% COPQ has $70M in annual quality cost exposure.

The EV intersection: Automotive electronics (ECUs, battery management systems, ADAS controllers) carry automotive COPQ rates (15–20%) at electronics manufacturing speeds. This is the highest-value electronics target.

Jabil (St. Petersburg, FL) — contract electronics manufacturing, automotive, healthcare

Siemens (multiple SE) — industrial electronics and automation hardware

DENSO (Maryville, TN) — automotive electronics, sensors, ECUs

Mitsubishi Electric (multiple SE) — automotive powertrail electronics

Aptiv (multiple SE) — vehicle electrical architecture and connectors

Panasonic Auto (multiple SE) — infotainment systems

Enphase Energy (FL) — solar microinverters — active account focus

Opening signal: Product recall for electronics failure, FDA warning (for medical electronics), IPC inspection audit failure, or customer complaint volume spike.

Who to call: Quality Director, Process Engineering Manager, NPI (New Product Introduction) Engineer for new lines.

The pitch: "At your throughput rate, 1% defect escape is [X] boards per day reaching customers. We close that gap to near-zero with inspection at line speed."

CorteX angle: If they have existing vision systems with false rejection problems, CorteX is a direct conversation — improving performance on their existing investment without replacing infrastructure.

Food manufacturing COPQ is uniquely driven by regulatory risk. An FDA warning letter or Class I recall triggers not just financial loss but immediate brand destruction — consumers don't return after a food safety event.

COPQ range: 2–5% of sales in normal operations. During a recall event: catastrophic and largely uninsurable.

The recall math: The average cost of a food recall is $10M in direct costs. Brand damage and lost distribution can add 10–20x that in lost future revenue. One inspection system at $60–80K prevents all of it.

FDA FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) requires preventive controls — automated inspection is increasingly a compliance requirement, not just a quality choice.

Tyson Foods (Springdale, AR HQ) — poultry, beef, pork processing across SE. Active pipeline account.

McKee Foods (Collegedale, TN) — Little Debbie snacks. Active account focus.

Wayne-Sanderson Farms (Oakwood, GA) — poultry processing

Flowers Foods (Thomasville, GA) — baked goods, bread brands

Smithfield Foods (Tar Heel, NC) — world's largest pork processing facility

Cal-Maine Foods (Ridgeland, MS) — egg production and processing

Brown-Forman (Louisville, KY) — spirits — Jack Daniel's, Woodford Reserve

Monogram Foods (Memphis, TN) — meat snacks and protein bars

Opening signal: FDA warning letter, Class I or II recall filing (FDA recall database is public and updated daily — check it), customer complaint spike, or FSMA audit failure.

Who to call: VP/Director of Quality Assurance, Food Safety Manager, Plant Manager, VP Operations.

The pitch: "I saw [FDA warning/recall] for [similar company]. At [target's] volume, a single contamination event costs $10M+ and permanent distribution loss. We provide the preventive control layer that keeps you off the FDA list."

FSMA angle: Frame inspection as compliance infrastructure, not just quality improvement. The regulatory mandate creates a non-discretionary budget.

Foreign object detection — bone fragments in poultry/meat, shell fragments in eggs, metal shards, plastic contamination. Vision + X-ray inspection is the standard — vision catches surface, X-ray catches internal.

Fill level inspection — underfilled containers create consumer complaints and regulatory violations. Overfill wastes margin at scale.

Label verification — wrong label, missing label, misaligned label. Allergen mislabeling triggers Class I recalls — most serious FDA category.

Package integrity — seal defects, pinhole leaks, compromised closures that allow contamination or reduce shelf life.

Color / appearance — off-spec product color indicates cook temperature problems, spoilage risk, or formula errors.

Food processing integrators are a parallel channel to direct end-user sales. Companies like Nordam, John Bean Technologies (JBT), Middleby, and regional food line integrators build complete processing and packaging lines that need vision inspection spec'd in at the design stage.

The vision channel play: Get spec'd into the integrator's standard line design → every line they sell includes your system → you're not selling machine by machine, you're selling fleet.

RED Group (New Orleans) is already an integrator prospect in your list who specs into food/bev projects across LA/MS — a referenceable food win with you opens that door wider.