In a high-mix machine shop, each job travels with a paper packet: drawings, a routing sheet, notes in three colors of pen. The packet gets coffee on it. Routecard replaces it with a screen at each machine that shows the job, its next step and the notes from the operator before.

Odile Fontaine was a production planner at a precision machining company. Marcus Bell ran its IT department of one. The system reads what the machines already say, adds a layer that is allowed to be wrong, and prints a packet if the network goes down. It never replaces a controller.

Routecard is live in 14 shops, from six people to ninety. A typical shop is running in under a week, and the first thing they report is that jobs stop disappearing. The founders go to each install, and keep a spare packet of paper on the shelf, in case.