Carbon Robotics × Lumari · Customer story
How Carbon Robotics Gets Ahead of Supplier Delays with Lumari
The robotics company uses Lumari to consistently coordinate with suppliers, maintain more accurate data in NetSuite, and identify late orders before they become production surprises.
Results at a glance
- 100%of open POs have trusted delivery dates
- <2 weeksimplementation time
- 24/7open-order risk monitoring
- 100%supplier adoption
The value is huge. It allows us to do clear-to-builds, see what the long pole in the tent is, and gives us visibility into the future that we didn’t have before.
About Carbon Robotics
Carbon Robotics builds advanced agricultural robots, including the LaserWeeder G2 and Carbon Autonomy. Its machines bring together computer vision, lasers, electronics, and complex mechanical systems.
That product complexity creates an equally demanding supply chain. Carbon’s purchasing team manages custom and off-the-shelf components across a broad supplier base while supporting fast engineering changes and an evolving production plan.
The challenge: Open order management was necessary, but too manual to complete consistently
Prior to using Lumari, Carbon estimated that only about 10% to 20% of its open POs had a delivery date the team would confidently trust.
Keeping every order current meant requesting acknowledgements, checking delivery commitments, following up throughout the lead time, gathering shipping information, and pushing updates into NetSuite. Executing that process consistently could consume more than half of each buyer’s week.
In practice, supplier follow-ups and coordination competed with everything else on the team’s plate. Some suppliers replied in the original email thread; others started new threads, sent PDFs, maintained spreadsheets, or required phone calls. The necessary process was too manual to execute consistently across hundreds of orders.
As a result, old dates remained in NetSuite, acknowledgements were difficult to track, and the team often discovered delays only after the expected delivery date had passed. Carbon needed a repeatable way to keep its POs moving without asking suppliers to adopt a portal.
We didn’t know something was going to be late until it was late. And then we were that much further behind scrambling, trying to figure out a mitigation plan. We would go check the PO and discover, ‘Oh, that was supposed to ship last week.’ Now we’re able to see that ahead of time and take action.
The solution: AI agents that run the team’s playbook across the systems they already use
Carbon connected Lumari to its Gmail, NetSuite, and Slack. Lumari Forge translated the team’s existing practices into an operating model for acknowledgements, follow-ups, delivery updates, and exceptions.
Lumari now acts as the operating layer across the order lifecycle:
- When Carbon issues a PO, Lumari monitors the supplier conversation, checks for acknowledgement, and follows up according to the operating model.
- As replies arrive, Lumari extracts confirmed and revised dates, quantities, tracking numbers, and other order details.
- Delivery dates and tracking updates are written back to NetSuite without requiring the buyer to retype them.
- Proposed supplier messages and exceptions are routed to the appropriate buyer in Slack for approval.
- Alerts bring late orders, missing responses, and other exceptions to the team’s attention.
From purchase order to governed action
- IssuePO sentStart the supplier conversation
- MonitorCheck acknowledgementFollow up according to Carbon’s model
- CaptureExtract supplier updatesDates, quantities, and tracking
- UpdateWrite back to NetSuiteKeep ERP data current
- EscalateRoute exceptions in SlackBuyers retain approval
The approval layer allowed Carbon to introduce automation without giving up control. Lumari’s hands-on implementation approach accommodated those realities while allowing suppliers to continue using email, PDFs, and spreadsheets without adopting a new portal or process.
Lumari does work that the team wasn’t getting done before. It’s actually doing the check-ins and making sure the process is completed.
The result: A more proactive operating model for open orders
Instead of relying on a buyer to remember every action required on a PO, Lumari’s agents manage every PO end-to-end, applying the operating rules and bringing exceptions back to the team.
Supplier delays become visible earlier
With Lumari’s agents proactively flagging risks like upstream delays or pushouts, the Carbon team can catch exceptions and changes before the risks become critical. That earlier signal gives procurement time to assess the impact, escalate, or evaluate another supplier.
NetSuite stays closer to the supplier conversation
Before Lumari, applying supplier updates in NetSuite was one of the biggest time sinks, and very few POs had a delivery date the team would confidently trust. Today, all of Carbon’s open POs have trusted delivery dates. Lumari converts unstructured replies into ERP updates directly in NetSuite, giving the team better data for build planning and mitigation decisions.
Buyers have a clear daily queue
Approvals and alerts arrive in Slack and are assigned to the relevant team member. Buyers can see which messages need review, which dates have changed, and what remains unresolved without having to build the context themselves from multiple systems and email threads.
From reactive PO chasing to proactive procurement
Carbon began with a focused goal: find PO risks sooner, automate the end-to-end management of open orders, and get visibility on what’s happening across the supply chain. With Lumari handling the monitoring and execution layer, the team can spend less effort reconstructing what happened and more time acting on the exceptions that need attention.