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Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
31–40 of 161 posts
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#32A stupid question from a layman: is it really how people do it?
I would have thought "manufacturing" was too generic and that you would need different software for each industry and so on.
But instead it looks like it doesn't matter if you're making shoes or cars or umbrellas or computer chips, everything uses the same software?
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#33We built a lot of the custom ERP related systems outside of our ERP. Leaving the financials to the big boys and just talk to the ERP. It's working really well.
agree. it's very impressive how SAP maintains multiple ledgers for different regulations in different countries. i'm not going to replace that any time soon. i think even tesla uses SAP for accounting, but something like this for the rest.
Is there a reason for such an arrangement? Why would Tesla not use SAP as their backbone ERP too?
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Give users an AI assistant they can ask to navigate them to the right screen or section of the application? In a previous job, we built our AI assistant so that it could operate our UI in the front-end and it was very powerful.
like a cmd+k type deal or something different? we do have cmd+k navigation to everywhere currently + global search, but i worry that less sophisticated users might not use it.
No, I mean, like a copilot style AI assistant, the user can chat with to ask what they want to do, and either the assistant can operate and navigate the UI to the right place, or perhaps even shortcut the steps for the user by asking for questions to satisfy inputs for the thing they are trying to accomplish.
An example: - user intent is to update an attribute for a component part number A21445
- user can click a chat bubble icon in lower right and chat to the assistant
- user describes their intent - "help me update the description for part number A21445
- system replies by informing the user it will open the right screen, opening a part/component editing UI, with the right part loaded, with the cursor positioned in the description field, and the assistant stays open for further assistance; or;
- system replies that it found the part and can update the description, shows the current description for the user, asks "what description do you want?"
- user enters updated description
- system confirms the change is correct
- user confirms the change is correct
- part/component description is updated without even opening the UI
FWIW, it's great that you have cmd-K and also I've seen those kind of search boxes get more smarts like being able to type "part:A21445" to go directly to a specific UI.
I just suggested the above as we learned some interesting user experiences became possible when our AI assistant had the ability to control our UI directly on behalf of a specific user.
An example in the app I worked in (a web based data pipeline tool):
- "Hey assistant, can you help me add some SQL transformation logic to dataflow ABC, to process the customer data?"
- system uses metadata and knowledge of the UI to open the right dataflow, select the right type of UI to open to enable the user to add a SQL query in the right place, maybe even autogenerate the initial SQL query - this all from the main home page of the app, from a side panel chat assistant.
- net result feels like talking to the assistant to operate the app, almost no clicks required.
I hope that makes sense.
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#35How does this compare with the manufacturing capabilities in ERPNext?
i don't know a ton about ERPNext's manufacturing capabilities, but i think there are really great for these reasons:
- free to try - open source - well-documented - great developer community
one big difference is in the data model. in ERPNext, everything is a doctype, and there's some standard hooks.
in carbon, there are hundreds of different tables. each ui is it's own set of react components, so it's a lot more manufacturing-specific and a little more opinionated.
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#36A stupid question from a layman: is it really how people do it? I would have thought "manufacturing" was too generic and that you would need different software for each industry and so on. But instead it looks like it doesn't matter if you're making shoes or cars or umbrellas or computer chips, everything uses the same software?
At the ERP level everything is abstracted such that every operation is just a black box - stuff (raw materials, subcomponents, labor) goes in, stuff (assemblies, finished goods, scrap) comes out.
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#37Congrats on the launch! Love seeing modern manufacturing systems. Do you handle supplier master data management? We're seeing procurement teams struggle with duplicate vendors in their ERPs - same supplier gets entered 5 different ways, messes up spend analytics and supplier relationships. We're building AI agents for business data cleanup (still in stealth, docs coming). Manufacturing/supply chain customers seem to…
for the supplier problem, we just use a typeahead/combobox component. but for raw materials, we auto-generate the ids like this: https://x.com/barbinbrad/status/1947682873416221184 also working on some agents: https://x.com/barbinbrad/status/1903047303180464586 would love to talk, i'm brad@carbon.ms
This is interesting but what about non standard items? There are plenty of cases where the raw material might theoretically have the same name, but was made with a different process by each manufacturer or the resulting item from different manufacturers has slightly diverged for various reasons.
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#38A stupid question from a layman: is it really how people do it? I would have thought "manufacturing" was too generic and that you would need different software for each industry and so on. But instead it looks like it doesn't matter if you're making shoes or cars or umbrellas or computer chips, everything uses the same software?
founder here. great question.
the way i see it, the sales side should be bespoke -- because everyone has a different product, and way of selling/configuring, and the factory-floor side should be bespoke -- because of all the different types of equipment. but the middle layer (purchasing, bill of materials, invoices, sales orders, scheduling, processes, work centers) can be standardized.
for me that's why it's important that the middle layer is open source. so that the bespoke layers can tie into it.
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#39A stupid question from a layman: is it really how people do it? I would have thought "manufacturing" was too generic and that you would need different software for each industry and so on. But instead it looks like it doesn't matter if you're making shoes or cars or umbrellas or computer chips, everything uses the same software?
founder here. great question. the way i see it, the sales side should be bespoke -- because everyone has a different product, and way of selling/configuring, and the factory-floor side should be bespoke -- because of all the different types of equipment. but the middle layer (purchasing, bill of materials, invoices, sales orders, scheduling, processes, work centers) can be standardized. for me that's why it's importa…
I see, I was under the impression that Carbon encompassed sales and factory floor too. Now it makes more sense. Thanks!
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
founder here. great question. the way i see it, the sales side should be bespoke -- because everyone has a different product, and way of selling/configuring, and the factory-floor side should be bespoke -- because of all the different types of equipment. but the middle layer (purchasing, bill of materials, invoices, sales orders, scheduling, processes, work centers) can be standardized. for me that's why it's importa…
I see, I was under the impression that Carbon encompassed sales and factory floor too. Now it makes more sense. Thanks!
ahh, it does -- but there's a slight hair to split.
on sales, carbon supports quoting, sales orders, invoicing, configurator, etc -- but it does not attempt to create a website for you where you can list your products and their configurations. the idea is that you have a site, the site sends info to carbon through the API (whether it's a quote or an order), and then things begin from there.
similarly with production except that the shop floor is pulling intstead of pushing. carbon manages the schedule, the jobs, the capacity planning, etc. and provides a UI for guys on the shop floor to record their time and materials. but if you want to interface with a machine, you'd be pulling information out of carbon through the API, and relaying it to the machine.