HI-LEX Retired iConnect After Files.com Matched an OEM’s Custom AS2 Specification

HI-LEX is a tier-1 automotive supplier producing door panels, window regulators, and control components from North American operations in Michigan, Alabama, and Mexico. It delivers many of those components just-in-sequence: parts arrive at an OEM assembly plant in the exact order they will be installed on vehicles.

That model runs on data. Sequencing broadcasts, shipment files, and serial-number traceability move continuously between HI-LEX plants and their customers. And in the automotive supply chain, the customer sets the terms of the exchange. The protocol, the security parameters, and the receipt discipline are stated by the OEM, and the supplier meets them. When one of HI-LEX’s OEM customers required AS2 for its shipping and traceability files, that requirement was not up for discussion.

Retiring iConnect would mean reproducing that OEM’s exact specification—including synchronous receipts and an unusual non-x12 header—without interrupting a live connection. If HI-LEX could do that in Files.com, future AS2 mandates could become repeatable configurations instead of new gateway decisions.

One Customer Connection Left on Its Own Product

HI-LEX runs its file operations on Files.com. Files.com Agents installed on plant sequencing servers in Alabama, Michigan, and Mexico carry just-in-sequence data between plants and customers, and Automations stage, route, and archive the files moving between the sequencing systems, the ERP, and the company’s EDI network.

One connection lived somewhere else. The AS2 link to a major OEM customer ran on iConnect, a dedicated AS2 product, carrying the shipping and traceability files that hold the serial numbers and part data behind components headed to that customer’s assembly plants.

That meant operating an entire separate product for the sake of a single connection. Its certificates, its configuration, and its day-to-day operation sat apart from the platform the team used for everything else. It also set a costly precedent: every future trading partner that mandated AS2 would either be added to the gateway or force another product decision.

A Live Link and a Specification With No Room for Error

The connection had stayed on its own product because moving it carried real risk. This was live traffic to one of HI-LEX’s primary customers, and the data on the link is what makes sequenced parts traceable at the assembly plant.

The OEM’s specification was also exact. It stated the port, the message security, the message digest algorithm, and the encryption algorithm, and it required a synchronous MDN, the signed receipt confirming each transmission. It carried one requirement most AS2 endpoints never see: a custom header declaring the content as non-x12, because the files are traceability data rather than standard EDI documents.

Any replacement had to match every one of those values, on a connection that could not be disrupted. So before anything moved, HI-LEX’s sequencing team verified each requirement against the platform, including whether the non-x12 header could be produced at all. Only then did HI-LEX commit to moving the connection onto Files.com AS2, the platform already carrying the rest of its plant file traffic.

Rebuilt to the OEM’s Specification, Down to the Header

The connection now runs as a Files.com AS2 endpoint over HTTPS with X.509 certificates, while a synchronous MDN confirms every transmission. Files.com delivered custom header key/value support to meet the non-x12 MIME specification, so the OEM’s endpoint receives exactly the header its systems require.

The cutover was sequenced around the customer’s requirements rather than HI-LEX’s convenience, and iConnect was retired. The connection’s certificate and transmission-log administration moved onto the Files.com site the team already managed, where files exchanged with the OEM now land alongside the sequencing, ERP, and VAN traffic inside the same audit log.

The Next AS2 Partner Was a Configuration, Not a New Product

When a second customer arrived with its own specific security protocols, HI-LEX established that connection on Files.com as well. Adding an AS2 trading partner is now the repeat of an established pattern, built by the same team that runs the plant sequencing traffic.

An OEM’s AS2 mandate, down to synchronous receipts and a non-standard header, turned out not to require a gateway at all.