Approve a $58,000 pilot. It funds the system that stops defective units from shipping — and it credits toward production.

The one thing to know before you commit: the escape rate and the value of a caught defect are our estimates today. The pilot's job is to replace them with your actual RMA, scrap, and warranty numbers before you spend a dollar on production. If your true escape rate proves below 0.2%, the production case is negative — which is exactly why the pilot validates it first, and why the pilot fee is creditable.

The prize is the platform, not the station

The investment — one price per phase

Phase	What you get	Investment	Time
Phase 2 · Pilot	Live proof on your floor; business case validated against your data	$58,000 creditable	3–5 wk
Phase 3 · Production	3-station inspection, Azure MLOps, Oracle/QMS/IMS integration, audit trail	$285,000	4–6 mo
Phase 4 · Platform	Natural-language quality intelligence + agents over the Fabric lake	$37,000	phased
Hardware (your CapEx)	$7,000 per station — 3 stations for production	$18,000	one-time
Run-rate	Azure ~$3K/yr + required managed-monitoring retainer	$81,000/yr	ongoing
Pilot credits toward production	Net one-time build after credit	$343,000

Optional inspection add-ons, priced firm when you want them: white-label logo verification $26,000, metallic-pin protrusion measurement (R&D) $23,000. Every PRR fee maps line-by-line to committed engineer-hours and named roles — the full breakdown is in the Proposal tab.

The hardware — exact models, one price

Item	Specified part	Qty	Cost
Camera	Basler ace 2 a2A2590-60ucBAS — 5 MP, color, USB 3.0	3	$1,281
Lens	Edmund Optics 25 mm C-Series #16528	3	$1,122
Dome light	Advanced Illumination DL2230 — diffuse, for true color	2	$2,154
Ring light	Advanced Illumination RL121 — grazing, for serial OCR	1	$440
Light controller	Strobe / hardware-trigger controller	1	$250
Edge compute	Fanless industrial mini-PC — Intel i5, 16 GB, no GPU	1	$900
Mounts + cabling	C-mount arms, USB3 locking cables, powered hub	set	$520
Fixture + enclosure	3D-printed fixture (you print) + light shroud	set	$333
Committed station total	Three cameras: bottom (serial/OCR), top (color/assembly), oblique (logo)		$7,000

These are the exact parts — decided, not a range. Static parts in a fixed fixture mean rolling-shutter cameras and a CPU are sufficient; there is no need for a high-speed sensor or a GPU. Each additional production station is $5,500 (it shares the compute and controller).

How it wires into your systems

Serial validation is what makes the verdict mean something — reading a serial isn't enough; matching it to the part, color, and logo it's supposed to be is what catches a traceability failure. It runs against your Oracle master data through the API Daniel exposes. All Azure consumption counts toward your Microsoft commitment (MACC) and is co-sell eligible.

Architecture, in three lines

• 1Inference runs on the edge box on the line. Azure is the audit and versioning backplane — never in the inspection loop, so a cloud or network outage never stops the line.
• 2No Azure Foundry, no GPU. A trained vision model at line speed needs neither — which is why cloud compute is ~$3K/yr. Latency is under 100 ms per unit (measured 19 ms in the POC).
• 3Governed for a medical line: ISO 13485, IEC 62304, and 21 CFR Part 11 record-keeping built in.

Board confidence

• —Your Quality team stays release-of-record. The AI advises; a person releases — and the gate earns autonomy only after formal IQ/OQ/PQ sign-off.
• —Payment is tied to a measurable, seeded-defect acceptance test (≥95% catch on a defined held-out set), not a soft field metric.
• —Worst case is bounded: a failed pilot costs $58K plus hardware and your team's time. Nothing on production is committed until the numbers are validated against your books.

The ask