Most teams start with one person on Operations Workbench Starter, free for 30 days. Add LevelOneAI in Claude or ChatGPT, connect your email and add any exports you have, such as open POs or a schedule. Starter shows which changes put orders at risk, with the evidence, and tracks each one to a close. When the whole team needs it, with live ERP data, approvals and write-back, that's the Operations Workbench.

How do Starter, the Workbench and the Operations Engine fit together?

The LevelOneAI Operations Engine does the work: it treats each order, PO or job as one record (Work), compares what changed with what was promised (Context), works out what it affects and who needs to decide (Decision), and assigns, drafts and tracks the next step (Action), until it's resolved. Starter runs the engine on one person's email and the documents they add. A Workbench runs it across a whole team's email, ERP and CRM for one workflow, with live data, approvals and write-back.

Is there a free trial?

Yes. Operations Workbench Starter is free for 30 days, and you don't need a card. After that it's $199/month or $1,990/year (two months free), for 1 user and 1 mailbox. If you don't continue, your account becomes read-only and your data is deleted 30 days later.

What do I need to use Starter?

A paid Claude or ChatGPT plan (the free tiers don't include the access it needs) and a Gmail or Outlook mailbox. For work email, a business or enterprise plan from that provider is recommended. Documents are optional: exports from any ERP or spreadsheet work.

What's the difference between Starter and the Operations Workbench?

Starter works from one person's email and the exports they add, and you set it up yourself in minutes. It's built to show the value on your own work. The Operations Workbench connects live to your ERP and planning data, runs on its own, puts the whole team in one queue, and adds approvals, drafted follow-ups and write-back. Starter fees paid in the 6 months before you buy a Workbench are credited toward its setup.

Which documents should I add to Starter?

Whatever you have, or none. It works on email from the first run, and tells you which document would sharpen the results most. Typical ones are an open-PO export, a production schedule, open sales orders or an AR aging report. It keeps only the fields it needs from them, encrypted, never the files.

It says what it doesn't know. Each fact shows its source and when it arrived. When an email could match more than one order, it asks instead of guessing, and when a document is missing it says "impact not assessed" rather than "no impact." Your team makes the call.

How does billing work?

Starter is billed monthly or annually by card, with a receipt emailed for every payment and invoices on your billing page. Cancel anytime. A Workbench is a one-time setup fee, invoiced on the schedule in your quote, plus an annual platform fee that starts at go-live.

When does my team need a Workbench?

When the work depends on more than one person's inbox: the evidence sits in your ERP, CRM or planning data, several people need to see the same item, and someone has to make sure it closes. A Workbench gives the team one queue, one record per item, approvals and a team view.

What's built, and what do you configure for us?

The Operations Engine, the work queue, the work record, approvals, follow-up tracking and the team view are built. For each Workbench we configure the connections to your systems, the rules that decide what counts as an exception, who owns what, what closes an item, and whether approved changes are written back. Which systems it connects to, and how, is worked out during setup.

Operations Workbench Starter is free for 30 days, then $199/month or $1,990/year. An Operations Workbench is a one-time setup fee, from $20,000 per workflow, plus an annual platform fee that's included in your quote. There's no ongoing services fee: once it's live, your team runs it, and our help is optional. The platform fee covers hosting, AI processing, connector updates and improvements to the Operations Engine. It starts at go-live, and in the first year you can cancel 90 days after go-live if the agreed measures aren't met. The payback calculator compares the setup fee with what the delay costs you each year. The next Workbench reuses the connections you already have, so it costs less to set up. See Pricing for what's included.

How long does setup take?

Starter works the same day. A Workbench typically goes live in 6 to 12 weeks, depending on how many systems it connects and how complex the rules are. We agree the baseline and what success looks like before setup starts.

What happens to our ERP and CRM?

They stay where they are and keep the master data. A Workbench reads from them. Write-back is optional: whether approved updates go back, and to which systems, is decided during setup. Nothing changes in your systems without approval.

What data does LevelOneAI keep?

It's designed to keep only what it needs to run the work, such as references to the source, the facts it extracted (a date, a quantity, a price), status, owners and decisions. For a Workbench, exactly what's stored is agreed with you during setup. Starter never stores email: it keeps short labels, plus the fields it needs from documents you add, encrypted.

What will this ask of our IT team?

Starter needs no IT: you connect your own email in Claude or ChatGPT, and there's a one-page security summary to share with IT. A Workbench needs read-only access to the systems the workflow uses, granted once by whoever administers them, and typically a few hours of IT time during setup. Nothing is installed, and nothing changes in your systems without approval. See Growing Businesses if you don't have an IT department, or Enterprises for how we fit an IT review.

What happens when it isn't sure, or data is missing?

If an email could belong to more than one order or PO, it shows the candidates with their evidence and asks a person to confirm, instead of guessing. If a source is unavailable or a record can't be found, the item is marked incomplete, so your team knows the picture isn't complete. Every fact is labeled confirmed, conflicting, inferred or unknown.

Is this a product or a consulting engagement?

A product. The Operations Engine, the work queue, the work record and approvals are built. Setup configures them to your systems, rules and owners for one workflow. You pay a one-time setup fee and an annual platform fee. There's no ongoing services fee, so your team runs it without us.

Do you have a SOC 2 report?

No SOC 2 report yet. We'll walk your security team through the data flow and complete your security questionnaire on request.

What happens to our data if we stop?

You can export your work history and audit trail. With Starter, your data is deleted 30 days after you cancel or after a trial ends without a paid plan. Your ERP and CRM keep their own data, because they were the record all along.

That's decided with you during scoping, based on your security and IT requirements.

To read the messy information around a piece of work (the email, the attachment, the system field), match it to the right order or PO, compare it with what was promised, and recommend the next step. Every fact is labeled confirmed, conflicting, inferred or unknown, with its source. Your people make the call, and nothing changes in a system without approval.

Why can't we just add an AI agent?

You can, and it will do the steps. What an agent won't do on its own is keep one record of each order across email and your systems, notice a change nobody asked about, know which promise it breaks, and keep the issue open until it's resolved. That's what you'd have to build and maintain around it. LevelOneAI already does that, and works alongside the agents you use. See Why AI Agents Fail under Resources.

How is this different from process mining?

Process mining reads event logs from your ERP or CRM, so it can't see what happens in email, spreadsheets and phone calls, which is where most exceptions start. It also tells you where the process breaks; it doesn't work each exception to a close. A Workbench does.

Why not wait for our ERP or CRM vendor to add AI?

Use it. ERP AI is getting good at work inside the ERP, such as reading a supplier's email and proposing the PO change. A Workbench is for what happens next, across systems: which jobs and customer orders the change puts at risk, what the planner's sheet says, who has to approve, and whether it was actually resolved. If the problem starts and ends inside your ERP, its own AI may be all you need.

When is our ERP's own AI enough?

When the problem starts and ends inside the ERP, updating the record is the whole job, and everything the decision needs is already there. Add a Workbench when the change matters because of what it affects elsewhere (jobs, customer orders, invoices), when the numbers people trust live in a spreadsheet or portal, when resolving it takes several people and an approval, or when someone has to confirm it was actually resolved.

What if our workflow changes?

Rules, owners, thresholds and closing conditions are configuration, so they can be updated as your process changes, without a new project.

What if our team doesn't adopt it?

A Workbench brings the context to each piece of work instead of asking people to go and look for it, and it fits around the systems they already use. We also agree the measures up front, so you can see whether it's working.

All insights

General

Medical Device Supply Chain Visibility: Finding the Risks Between Systems

By Shanshan Ma

In medical device operations, a small supplier change can ripple across production, quality and delivery. The risk often isn't in any one system. It's in the gaps between them.

"The supplier told us two weeks ago. Why are we only finding out now?"

A supplier emails a buyer: a molded housing for a device assembly will ship two weeks late. The PO in the ERP still shows the original date. A production run that needs the part is scheduled in ten days, and a customer shipment depends on that run. Nobody connects the pieces until a planner finds the shortage.

Every system did its job. The email was in an inbox, the PO was in the ERP and the schedule was in the planning tool. The consequence wasn't visible in any of them.

The challenge isn't just managing exceptions. It's knowing what an exception affects, and who needs to act next.

Why medical device operations are hard to see end to end

Work crosses supply chain, manufacturing, quality, regulatory, engineering, logistics and customer operations. Each function has its own systems and procedures, and each does its job well. But understanding the current state of an order, a component or a launch still means someone connects information across all of them.

Three gaps show up again and again:

Information changes before the picture does. A supplier email, a revised forecast or an updated document changes the meaning of a record, but no record changes with it.
The impact crosses functions. A supply issue becomes a planning issue. A missing document holds up a release. Each team sees its own part, not the whole situation.
People are the connective tissue. They search threads, compare spreadsheets, ask for updates and keep side trackers. The judgment is necessary. Rebuilding the same context every time is not.

Why automation doesn't catch these

Automation works when the process and the next step are predictable: route a PO for approval, sync a date between two connected apps, enforce the steps in a quality workflow.

It struggles when the evidence is spread across systems, emails and documents, and when a change only matters because of a specific order, component or commitment. Then the questions are about context:

What changed? Which update, record or commitment is different?
What does it affect? Which orders, materials, production plans or shipments?
What's unresolved? Missing information, conflicting sources or a pending decision?
Who acts? Which person or function owns the next step?
How urgent is it? How much time is left to respond?

An integration moves data between systems. Answering these questions means connecting that data to the work it affects.

Seeing changes through, across the systems you have

LevelOneAI focuses on work that gets stuck between systems. Your ERP, quality management system and planning tools stay where they are. We connect the evidence around them to the work it describes.

For a supply chain workflow, that means linking authorized supplier updates to purchase orders, inventory, production dependencies and delivery commitments. A team can then see:

Which supplier or material changes may affect planned production
Which orders or commitments need a fresh look
Where information is missing or conflicting
What's unresolved, and who owns the next step
Why it matters, with the evidence behind it

The goal isn't more alerts. It's less time assembling context before someone can act. (We go deeper on one piece of this in Your ERP Says 2 Weeks. Your Supplier Takes 6.)

What this does, and doesn't, replace

In medical devices, the boundaries matter.

It complements your systems of record. It doesn't become an unofficial source of truth.
It never bypasses validated workflows or decides product quality, regulatory compliance or release readiness.
It starts read-only. It surfaces potential impacts and the evidence for authorized people to review.
Consequential actions stay inside your approved processes, permissions and controls.
It's designed to keep only what it needs to run the work. What's stored, and where it runs, is agreed with you during setup.

The aim is to cut the effort of understanding a situation, not the oversight needed to resolve it.

Start with one workflow

Pick a recurring workflow where information is scattered, exceptions are frequent and people spend real time assembling context. Candidates for a first workflow:

Supplier delivery and material exceptions. Link supplier updates to POs, inventory and production dependencies, so potential disruptions surface earlier.
Order-to-delivery coordination. Catch when changes in materials, order status, documents or logistics put a customer commitment at risk, and keep each one open until delivery is confirmed.
Launch readiness. Show unresolved dependencies across supply chain, engineering, quality, regulatory and commercial teams. This supports coordination; formal approvals and release gates stay where they are.
Supplier documentation follow-up. Surface missing or inconsistent documents and their owners, while quality decisions stay in your quality system.

These are starting points, not problems every company has. The right one depends on your workflows, systems and controls.

Measure the first workflow against your current process:

Time spent investigating each exception
How early issues are identified
Issues found that existing processes didn't catch in time
Time spent on follow-ups and handoffs
False alarms, and the effort to check them

If it doesn't improve visibility or reduce the work to resolve an issue, it hasn't earned a place in the workflow.

Try this week

Pick three supplier date changes from last month. For each, note how many days passed between the supplier's email and the planner knowing.
Choose one upcoming production run. List every external input it depends on, and check where the latest status of each one lives.
Ask your team which exception they investigated most often last month, and how many systems they opened to do it.

Knowing something changed is only the beginning. The real question is what that change means for the work that follows.

See how the LevelOneAI Operations Engine works

Talk to us