LineSight and INVEX: What Each Does on a Service Center Floor

What INVEX does well

Invera was founded in 1977 and says its software has been implemented at more than 700 metal sites in over 14 countries. INVEX is the current generation, after eSTELPLAN and STRATIX, and Invera describes it as "an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and AI platform designed exclusively for metal service centers."

On flat-rolled, INVEX publishes one of the most detailed processing descriptions of any metals ERP we have read. Its flat-rolled page says slitting and cut-to-length "can be handled quickly and out-of-the-box," lists decoiling, blanking, shearing and multi-strand blanking, and says each layout "uses a unique shop floor production recording system with barcode scanning."

In 2024 Invera added a length nesting tool to quoting. A salesperson can nest an entire quote or order "in one click", and the tool "determines the optimal cut plan to reduce scrap" for saw-cut items. Ivy, announced on September 17, 2026, puts AI inside the ERP. Sales agents update due dates on order lines, cancel order items and apply customer-specific or contract-based price changes. Warehouse agents reschedule jobs after unplanned downtime and trace a damaged tag's history to issue a replacement label. "Before executing any changes, Ivy confirms the action with the user and reports back exactly what was completed." Invera says these capabilities are planned for release incrementally in upcoming INVEX versions.

What INVEX's published material covers

Two jobs sit outside what Invera has published so far. The first is choosing. INVEX's layouts set up and record a slitting job, and its length nesting works within one quote or order. We found no published description of INVEX deciding which orders across the whole open book should go onto which coils, in what sequence, through which knife setups.

The second is intake. Ivy's published agents work on orders that already exist in INVEX. The launch release does not mention reading a customer's emailed PO, a PDF or a photo and turning it into a new sales order. Ivy is arriving in stages, so check Invera's current release notes.

What LineSight adds on top of INVEX

LineSight's production planning reads open orders and inventory from the ERP in real time. A planner picks the orders to fill, and LineSight's optimization engine searches combinations across the whole book and the live coil inventory, respecting the order constraints, line constraints and operational preferences the shop sets. Every plan shows what is cut from which coil and why. A person approves it before anything goes to INVEX or the floor, and when a planner overrides a width or a pattern, later plans respect it.

The Command Center covers the order side. It reads orders from email, PDFs, photos and texts, enters sales orders, matches coil, builds the slit plan, creates work orders, books freight and builds material buys. Decisions such as approving a slit plan land in a Needs you column for a person.

How LineSight and INVEX connect

INVEX stays the system of record. LineSight pulls orders and inventory from it and pushes approved work orders and updates back, so INVEX's tags, genealogy and shop-floor recording carry on as they do today. LineSight says each customer gets a dedicated integration built during onboarding and that most customers are fully live in under a month.

• INVEX holds the open order lines and the tagged coils on the floor.
• LineSight reads both and proposes a slitting plan for the orders the planner selected.
• The planner reviews it, overrides where needed and approves.
• Work orders go back into INVEX, and the floor runs them through INVEX's layouts and barcode recording.

Three days on an INVEX floor

A Monday order book with 40 slit lines due this week

INVEX knows every line and coil. If the plan itself is still worked out in a spreadsheet off a morning export, this is where LineSight fits: one plan across all 40 lines and every eligible coil, approved by the planner and written back to INVEX as work orders.

A customer emails a PO for 16 ga galvanized in three widths

The Command Center can read the email and enter the sales order in INVEX, with a person approving it first. Ivy's published agents take over once the order exists, for example when the customer later moves a due date.

The slitter goes down for two hours on Wednesday

This is squarely Ivy's published territory: a warehouse agent reschedules the affected jobs and logs the reason. If the downtime changes which coils should feed which orders, that is a new plan, and the planner can run one in LineSight against the current book.

Pricing

Elite Steel, the one customer LineSight names publicly, cut its scrap rate 2.9 points and added about $850K in annualized revenue. That is one operation with one product mix. The scrap calculator shows what a point is worth at your own tonnage.

Can you use both?

That is the intended setup. LineSight claims no invoicing, accounting, inventory records, genealogy or certs. INVEX does not publish whole-book slitting optimization or order intake from email and documents. Where they overlap, decide job by job: if Ivy handles your due-date changes and rescheduling well, use it.

The bottom line

If your INVEX data is sound and the pain is scrap, planner hours or POs keyed by hand, LineSight is built to sit on the system you already have rather than replace it. If your tag-level inventory needs cleanup, do that in INVEX first, because no planning layer can work from inventory that is wrong. For how INVEX compares with other ERPs, see INVEX vs Eniteo and the metals ERP guide.