HI-LEX Uses Files.com to Find and Resend Missing Shipment Files in Just-in-Sequence Delivery

HI-LEX Corporation is a tier-1 automotive supplier producing window regulators, door components, wiring harnesses, locks, and related components for OEMs including Hyundai and Kia. Its North American manufacturing footprint includes operations in Michigan, Alabama, and Mexico.

Some of that work ships just-in-sequence. At its Alabama sequencing plant, HI-LEX builds parts in the exact order the assembly line will install them. In just-in-sequence supply there is no inventory buffer: each part is built for a specific vehicle and has to reach the line in the order the vehicles come down it.

That order travels as data. The In Sequence shipment program on each plant’s sequencing server emits broadcast files. Sequentially numbered shipment files go out to a third-party shipper, each one representing a load on a truck. Serial numbers pass between the PLEX ERP and the sequencing servers. Every one of those files has to arrive, arrive exactly once, and arrive in order. For HI-LEX, keeping the sequence intact was never optional; it is the product.

A Missing File Became a Production Problem

Before Files.com, that data moved over a patchwork built up over decades. The Boomi integration platform made direct point-to-point SFTP connections to individual servers. Other file exchange with suppliers and customers still ran through on-premises FTP servers, some more than 30 years old.

The sequentially numbered files headed to the shipper required a way to catch gaps and recover the missing file. Without it, a missing file could break the order feeding downstream sequencing. By the team’s own account, those gaps were a recurring source of trouble.

The duplicate problem was just as real. Processes picked files up from folders on polling intervals, and a file that lingered in a folder risked being processed twice.

The Fix Had to Reach the Plant Floor Without Stopping It

The patchwork had survived because it was inseparable from live production. In Sequence is file-triggered legacy software: it consumes a .csv and a matching .done file from a local folder, and it was not going to be rewritten. The sequencing servers sit inside plant networks in three countries and could not be exposed to inbound connections. And all of it carried live just-in-sequence data to automotive customers, so there was no window to take the pipeline down and rebuild it.

What HI-LEX needed was an integration layer that could reach on-premises folders in three countries without opening the plants to inbound traffic, guarantee that interval-polling processes handled each file exactly once, verify that sequential deliveries were actually sequential and repair the gaps itself, retry through transient outages on its own, and keep the archive all of this leaves behind under control. HI-LEX selected Files.com to provide that layer and built it out workload by workload while production kept shipping.

Agents on the Sequencing Servers, Automations in Between

The Files.com Agent was installed as a Windows service on plant sequencing servers in Alabama and Michigan, and later Mexico. Each Agent made an outbound-only connection to Files.com and mounted the plant’s local folders as Remote Server Mounts, so cloud automations could work directly against on-premises folders with no inbound firewall change. The Agent underpinning the plants has, in Robert Elliott’s words, been “working reliably and smoothly.”

The mounts let HI-LEX keep In Sequence unchanged while Files.com worked directly with its local folders. When Boomi pulled new-part serial numbers from the PLEX ERP into a .csv, Files.com landed the file and its matching .done trigger on the sequencing server. In Sequence processed them exactly as it always had.

The same Files.com layer replaced three direct SFTP connections from Boomi to individual servers and staged broadcast files for downstream delivery. To prevent duplicate processing, a read-triggered Files.com Automation moved each file to the archive as soon as it was downloaded, so the next polling pass never saw it. For sequential deliveries to the shipper, an automated check verified that every file in the run was present in number order. Where one was missing, the workflow found it and resent it.

Transient failures resolved themselves too because the Automations retried on their own.

“Moving from one mount on Files.com to another mount on Files.com is easy, and if the mount is not available at that moment, the automation will come back around and figure it out.”

Behind the pipeline, Files.com Data Governance rules organized the archive into dated monthly subfolders, and File Expiration cleared anything older than six months, including on the Agent-mounted folders at the plants.

A Pipeline That Polices Itself

With the Files.com layer in production across all three countries, HI-LEX turned recurring sequence problems and direct point-to-point connections into a pipeline that enforces its own rules.

“We have a process that says, ‘Hey, is everything sequential? If not, go look for the file you’re missing, resend it.’ I rarely even know that it runs.”

A missing shipment file is now found and resent with no one involved. Move-after-read became the standard pattern for the pipeline’s file handling, so every interval-polling process sees each file exactly once. Eight production integration processes now use Files.com folders, mounts, and Automations as their staging and archiving layer. An archive of roughly one million files manages itself, organized into monthly folders and cleared past six months automatically on the plant servers as well as in the cloud.

The pattern also compounds. Bringing another plant into the pipeline means installing an Agent on its sequencing server; that is how a rollout that began in Alabama and Michigan reached Mexico. Each new workflow inherits exactly-once handling, automatic retries, and archive governance instead of reinventing them.

Sequence Integrity Now Lives in the Transfer Layer

HI-LEX did not bolt monitoring onto a fragile pipeline; it moved just-in-sequence data onto a layer where integrity is a property of the transfer itself. For a supplier whose product is parts arriving in order, sequence integrity no longer has to be discovered by people after something breaks. The file transfer layer enforces it.