Acquisition of the machine intelligence platform extends Lake from a suite of shop floor products toward a single integrated platform spanning labor, documents, machines, and analytics.
GREEN BAY, Wis. July 6, 2026 - The Lake Companies, a manufacturing software developer and Infor Gold Partner, today announced it has acquired Freedom IoT, a machine intelligence and OEE platform with two decades of controls integration expertise and a blue-chip base of discrete manufacturers across aerospace and defense, heavy equipment, medical devices, and consumer products.
Freedom IoT connects directly to the machines on a plant floor, more than sixty controller and protocol types across CNC and PLC environments and turns that raw signal into real-time actionable information with key metrics such as Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) at the company level down to an individual machine. The platform is software-only, runs on premises or in the cloud, and is trusted in some of the most demanding manufacturing environments in North America, including air-gapped defense facilities. Freedom will continue to be supported and grown with the full resources of The Lake Companies behind it.
FROM A SUITE TO A PLATFORM
The acquisition is a milestone in a larger strategy. The Lake Companies is the only Infor SyteLine partner with its own proprietary product suite, and it is now assembling those products into a single integrated platform that runs the manufacturing shop floor. Shop-Trak captures labor and job execution. Doc-Trak manages documents and workflow. Fact-Trak delivers analytics. Freedom adds the machine layer.
Bringing labor execution and machine intelligence together, with analytics on top, positions Lake uniquely to give manufacturers a single connected view of machine performance, labor performance, and true job-level profitability, a picture that has historically been difficult to assemble from separate systems. Freedom is the first of several moves the company has planned to complete that platform.
e$core® by Freedom AI allows companies to quickly understand whether you are making or losing money at an operational level.“We are no longer just selling products, we are building the platform that runs the shop floor for SyteLine manufacturers. SyteLine runs your business. Lake runs your floor. Freedom IoT is a cornerstone of that. Our customers measure how their people and jobs perform. Freedom measures how their machines perform. Bringing those together, with analytics on top, gives manufacturers an honest answer to a deceptively hard question: what does it really cost to make this part, and where is the next improvement hiding? This is the first of several steps, and there is more to come.”
— Chris Orr, Chief Executive Officer of The Lake Companies
“Joining The Lake Companies means Freedom is not just continuing, it is accelerating. Our customers get the same platform and the same team they know, now backed by a larger engineering and support organization and a roadmap with real investment behind it. For the manufacturers who have grown with us, this is the best of both worlds.”
— Jeff Price, President of Freedom IoT
Freedom's full team, including President Jeff Price and the platform's lead architects, is continuing with the business. Existing Freedom customers will see no interruption to their service, and the combined company will continue to support both on-premises and cloud deployments. The unified platform will make its public debut at IMTS 2026 in Chicago. Both The Lake Companies and Freedom IoT are owned by Banyan Software, a global acquirer of vertical market software businesses. Learn more at banyansoftware.com.
ABOUT THE LAKE COMPANIES
The Lake Companies is a manufacturing software developer and the only Infor SyteLine partner with its own proprietary product suite. Its Trak-Suite products, including Shop-Trak, Doc-Trak, and Fact-Trak, extend the SyteLine ERP platform with shop floor data collection, document intelligence, and analytics. The company achieved Infor Gold Partner status in 2026 and serves discrete and engineer-to-order manufacturers in industrial equipment, aerospace and defense, and metal fabrication. Learn more at lakeco.com.
ABOUT FREEDOM IoT
Freedom IoT is a machine intelligence platform that delivers real-time Overall Equipment Effectiveness for discrete manufacturers. With more than sixty machine connectors built over two decades and a software-only architecture that runs on premises or in the cloud, Freedom serves leading manufacturers across aerospace and defense, heavy equipment, medical devices, and consumer products.
