Connect ioTORQ LEAN to Claude or ChatGPT and ask questions about your production data in plain English.
Instead of opening dashboards and reports in LEAN, you can ask a question and get an answer based on the live LEAN data you already have permission to see.
For example:
Which assets at the Toronto plant are in downtime right now?
What product is Line 3 running right now?
What was the most common cause of downtime for the Filler at the Toronto facility last week?
How it works
Supported AI applications connect to ioTORQ LEAN using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). MCP is an open standard that gives AI applications a consistent way to request information from systems such as LEAN.
ioTORQ LEAN provides an MCP server that answers these requests with the LEAN data the signed-in user is permitted to see.
LEAN does not run an AI model as part of this connection. It provides read-only access to specific LEAN information when the connected AI application asks for it. The AI application does the AI processing and presents the answer to you.
What this means for you
It uses live LEAN data. Information is retrieved from LEAN when you ask your question, not from a separate export or copy.
It is read-only. The AI application can retrieve and compare information, but it cannot justify downtime, assign causes, change products or targets, or edit anything else in LEAN.
Your LEAN permissions still apply. The connection uses your LEAN account, so you can only see the facilities and assets you can already access in LEAN.
What you can do
Instead of signing in to LEAN, finding the right asset, choosing a report and a date range, and reading the results yourself, you can just ask.
Find your facilities and assets
Which facilities can I access?
List the assets at the Toronto plant that are in downtime right now.
Check what an asset is doing now
What is Line 3 running right now?
Review maintenance performance
What were the MTTR and MTBF for Filler 2 last month?
Which assets at the Toronto plant had the most downtime last week?
Review changeovers
Which product changeovers on Line 3 took longest this month?
Which changeovers on Line 3 overran their target by the most last week?
Which assets at the Toronto plant lose the most time to changeovers?
Review OEE metrics
What was Line 3's OEE yesterday, and what pulled it down: availability, performance or quality?
Review the phases history of an asset
Show me Line 3's downtime today that still needs a cause.
Choose your AI application
What information can it retrieve?
The ioTORQ LEAN connection currently provides these read-only capabilities:
Capability | What it does |
Get facilities | Lists the facilities you can access |
Get assets in facility | Lists the assets in a facility, optionally only those currently running, in downtime, in a changeover, or shut down |
Get asset status | Shows what an asset is doing right now and the product it is running |
Maintenance metrics for an asset | Retrieves running time, downtime, equipment failure time and count, MTTR and MTBF for an asset over a period |
Maintenance metrics for a facility | Retrieves the same maintenance metrics for every asset in a facility, the most downtime first |
Changeovers for an asset | Retrieves an asset's changeovers over a period, grouped by product transition, with their count, duration, and time lost or gained against target |
Changeovers for a facility | Shows which assets in a facility lose the most time to changeovers, optionally broken down by product transition |
OEE for an asset | Retrieves an asset's OEE with its availability, performance and quality, and the running time, downtime and production behind them |
Phases for an asset | Lists what an asset did phase by phase over a period (start, end, duration, state, product, cause, and whether it was justified) |
Ping | Confirms that the connection to LEAN is working |
These capabilities are read-only. Actions such as justifying downtime, assigning a cause, or correcting production data must still be done directly in LEAN.
Ask specific questions
The AI application retrieves information from LEAN as it needs it, rather than having the full picture of your LEAN environment at once. Give it the relevant details and, for broader requests, start with a specific question and build on the answer step by step.
Name the facility and the asset. Use the names as they appear in LEAN. If two assets have similar names, the AI application may ask you which one you mean.
For example: Show the downtime for Filler 2 at the Toronto plant.
Give the period. Name a period such as today, yesterday, this week, last week, this month, last month, the last 24 hours, the last 30 days, the current shift or the last shift, or give exact dates and times.
For example: Show the changeovers on Line 3 from 1 to 7 March.
Ask for the facility's local time. Unless you ask for it, days, weeks and months are calculated in UTC, which can move the start and end of a day by several hours.
For example: Show yesterday's downtime for Line 3, using the facility's local time.
For broader questions, work step by step. For example, instead of asking:
How is the Toronto plant performing?
Start with a more specific question:
Which assets at the Toronto plant had the most downtime last week?
Then follow up on the assets that stand out.
Current limitations
The connection currently:
Cannot change data or configuration in LEAN
Cannot justify downtime or assign causes
Cannot create LEAN dashboards, reports, or exports
Returns up to 100 results per question. For a facility with more, ask about a smaller group, such as the assets currently in downtime
Permissions and data handling
The AI application can access only the facilities and assets that your LEAN account is authorized to see.
If your LEAN permissions change, the information available through the connection changes accordingly. Connecting an AI application does not give you any additional LEAN permissions.
Each user signs in with their own account
Each person authorizes the connection with their own LEAN account, including single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication if your organization uses them. Users do not inherit the LEAN permissions of the person who set up the connection.
Data is shared with the AI application you choose
When you ask a question, your question and the LEAN information needed to answer it are sent to the AI application you connected: Anthropic for Claude, or OpenAI for ChatGPT. How that information is handled is governed by your organization's agreement and the terms that apply to that service.
Check your organization's policies before connecting an AI application to production LEAN data.
Your password is not shared with the AI application
You sign in directly to ioTORQ LEAN with your own account. Your LEAN password is never given to the AI application. You can disconnect the integration whenever you no longer want the application to access LEAN on your behalf.
Troubleshooting
If you have trouble connecting or using ioTORQ LEAN with your AI application, see the Troubleshooting guide.