Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 161 posts

Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years

#141

Post by RaftPeople »

gh0stcat wrote: post #136

I just wanted to throw my 2 cents, I work in IT and in meat processing there is perhaps only one or two software products that does catch-weight processing well due to the time constraints and custom labeling. If you can do that well you stand to gain a lot in that industry. It doesn't look like you guys are focusing on specific industries, but I actually think you can provide an incredible value to real businesses b…

Years ago I added a catch-weight extension to an ERP for a meat distributor.

I remember their freezers where the guys wore special clothing and gloves but they still needed to be able to hit buttons on the computer.

Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years

#143

Post by unixhero »

robertlagrant wrote: post #114
rancar2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operations and planning are performed when one’s company fits the mold of a classic business. The system you are building suits the companies that break the mold, which is a growing number as personalization/hyper customization grows.

Can you give an example of mold-breaking?

Anything which needs detailed operations planning of the production. Larger factories and say chemical companies use standard flows of the ERP (SAP) for this.

Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years

#144

Post by phendrenad2 »

robertritz wrote: post #21

I’m the owner of a smallish furniture manufacturer. About 15 employees. I built out the order management system myself because nothing really fit our process. After looking at the site I can’t really say I know how this software could help us. I’ll look at it later on my desktop but first I think some better demo videos or gifs on the landing page would be nice.

When I worked in manufacturing we had an ERP system that was awful, and we ended up supplementing it with Excel spreadsheets and an Access database. I briefly started writing my own ERP system to replace the whole system, but I realized something: my ERP system would be hopelessly tied to our process at this company, and wouldn't be usable by the manufacturer down the street, which my buddy worked at, without extensive rewriting. Software of this kind has a tension between being general-purpose and being really good for one specific workflow.

Maybe ERP is one of those things that co-evolves with the company, shaping the company as much as it's shaped by the company.

Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years

#145

Post by jdhn »

barbinbrad wrote: post #11
jdhn wrote: post #2

As a UX person, this is the type of stuff I love to see posted here. So many people don't understand how atrocious the UX is in non-sexy career tracks such as manufacturing. One question I have is how users have reacted to your leftmost nav bar. 13 icons is a lot, do you show them all at one time, or do they dynamically appear based on the user role of the person who's logged in at the time?

man! i wish i knew how to do a better job with that. there's just so much stuff. do you have any ideas?

So you could try grouping icons into sections, labeling the sections, and then clearly delineating the space between said sections. For example, you could have small text in all bold and all caps as the section title. Another user suggested using text with the icons, which is good for accessibility. Also, looking at the first screenshot in your Github, you could completely merge the left icon only nav with the nav directly to its right. This could result in saving some space.

Also, if you really wanted to, you could move back to a more traditional top menu where you have the section title, mousing over the section would open a menu (what is now your icons), and then if needed you could have a submenu underneath (what is your left nav with the words in your first Github photo). Discoverability would potentially take a hit but it's a different way of doing it.

If you have any other questions feel free to reach out, I like doing this stuff.

Edit: Another user suggested using AI enhanced chat to navigate around. This is a sign that the information architecture is WAY too confusing. AI agents shouldn't be utilized for navigation purposes.

Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years

#146

Post by robertritz »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #144
robertritz wrote: post #21

I’m the owner of a smallish furniture manufacturer. About 15 employees. I built out the order management system myself because nothing really fit our process. After looking at the site I can’t really say I know how this software could help us. I’ll look at it later on my desktop but first I think some better demo videos or gifs on the landing page would be nice.

When I worked in manufacturing we had an ERP system that was awful, and we ended up supplementing it with Excel spreadsheets and an Access database. I briefly started writing my own ERP system to replace the whole system, but I realized something: my ERP system would be hopelessly tied to our process at this company, and wouldn't be usable by the manufacturer down the street, which my buddy worked at, without extensi…

This I think will be the future. The ERP I made for my company is hopelessly tied to our process, and it saves time and reduces mental overhead for everyone.

It evolves as we do with me making feature updates and bug fixes every few weeks. Of course this is unusual in that I’m a very technical owner, but I feel this is the right way.

As software becomes easier to make custom software will reduce in price as well. Software gives my company an edge and I’ll take every advantage I can get.

Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years

#147

Post by djfobbz »

barbinbrad wrote: post #10
ronameels wrote: post #9

Do you have any users yet? What’s your target size manufacturing company? I’ve been in the industrial software space for a while, and at least for large MFG, you only see the major players, with SAP being the most common. There is this “UNS” concept that’s been around for 5ish years now and has caught steam (unified namespace, google and you’ll find it). It has holes from a technical standpoint, but it will get atten…

Hey I'd love to learn more about your thoughts. We have a discord if you'd like to join. I see the market like this: - small job shops and startups are using it now (we have 5 customers today using it to run operations) - mid-market manufacturers with 200-ish employees are where i'd like to go, but many want all the accounting baked in and that's still a WIP - large players have to use SAP for accounting because they…

I worked on a very similar system for a friend's laser fab shop using the Roda framework (Ruby). Since Tailwind wasn't available at the time, I had to rely on Bootstrap. The project was quite similar to what you've done, although I stopped short of implementing job scheduling and live job tracking. I really love your execution...especially the UI.

I eventually handed my project over to another firm to continue development, as I became occupied with other, larger projects. It's still in use at my friend's shop, which now has about 80 employees.

I would still love to take another stab at it as I really wanted the system to have the ability to parse 3D files, for unfolding and automated quoting. Does your system already handle that? I browsed through your videos and saw that you at least had the preview part of it working.

Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years

#148

Post by djfobbz »

thedogeye wrote: post #75
SilverElfin wrote: post #48

What exactly is an “ERP”? Virtually everything I read about them or on the website of products, is so vague and broad that it sounds like “it’s everything”. How would a business know they need this product? For the big ERPs out there, is there a clear guide with screenshots that show what they concretely do?

This blog post from Retool was really helpful for answering that question: https://retool.com/blog/erp-for-engineers

That was a good read! Thanks

Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years

#149

Post by rancar2 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #114
rancar2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operations and planning are performed when one’s company fits the mold of a classic business. The system you are building suits the companies that break the mold, which is a growing number as personalization/hyper customization grows.

Can you give an example of mold-breaking?

3D print manufactures that print custom parts need to use their manufacturing and billing operation outside the mold. Unixhero provided another example, but there are a lot of examples where big ERPs aren’t the right solution and/or require a lot of money/customization/ongoing costs to make it work well beyond its total ROI.

Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years

#150

Post by Intermernet »

ssss11 wrote: post #90
helltone wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This resonates with me a lot. Can I contact you? My email is in my profile.

That’s exactly how they make the money

True, but I'm not actually in tech anymore. I still have a consultancy business, but I make money doing geo-technical rope-access work now. A bit of a sea-change.

I'm happy to impart my thoughts on this topic for free, but I'm not sure how useful they would be after almost 10 years!

Post reply on HN