Great UI! Congrats on the launch
Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
41–50 of 161 posts
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#42I'll bite. I am a ERP consultant in the SMB manufacturing and distribution space. Primarily we operate on Acumatica, Sage and Netsuite.
The most important thing about ERP systems is - customization. IE: Scripting (netsuite), or even core programming (Sage100 for example). Not just user defined fields but workflows and being able to override and hook into core parts of the system. Say you want to override your cost basis for a certain productline or maybe serve different prices based on the shipping warehouse.
How do you approach that?
EDIT:
How do you handle the finances, G/L auditing, and allt hat financial wizardy?
customers.. they love PDFs. How do you handle generating things like pick lists, invoice sheets, etc? templating?
EDIT2:
One thing big ERPs provide is basically a cohesive way to extend. Not just an API in a RESTFUL sense, it's more akin to an IDE or like GTK+, there's almost everything rolled in for extension inside the 'world view' of the ERP. Every ERP makes some decisions and the rest of the world may flow, be that how you issue credit memos, handle multiple financial entities (do they all have the same chart of accounts? do they all have the same modules? Are there shared users) and so forth. How do you approach that? IE: when you need to slap something like PO's on top of AP, so basically AP + Items and a whole bunch more, does that "flow"? Do you receive those goods and they end up in your inventory for AR? etc.... Having an extensible system is great for addons and consulting, but the bigger piece is - for you, letting your ERP grow and add capabilities.
EDIT3: "Stripe" is not a billing techstack. Mostly CFOs make decisions about billing options, not us lowly tech monkies. Do you support pluggable vaults or anything akin?
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#43What vertical ERPs does it replace?
right now, we're just targeting small-medium manufacturers. there are two types -- one for job shops, and one for assembly type work. we're trying to target both. imo though, it's fairly straightforward to go from a manufacturing ERP to a non-manufacturing ERP -- but it's very difficult to do the opposite because of the complexity of manufacturing.
ERPs supporting complex asset maintenance (eg mineral processing plants in the middle of nowhere) have a different flavour of complexity, although you could argue they are EAMs.
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#44Do 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…
Gotta have your G/L tied to your whole system. How else can you do project billing or Make-To-order quoting and have it roll your Cogs and such over to the G/L....
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Great Q&A's, thank you for taking the time to answer! Sounds like a great way to handle the complexities of business reality.
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
right now, we're just targeting small-medium manufacturers. there are two types -- one for job shops, and one for assembly type work. we're trying to target both. imo though, it's fairly straightforward to go from a manufacturing ERP to a non-manufacturing ERP -- but it's very difficult to do the opposite because of the complexity of manufacturing.
ERPs supporting complex asset maintenance (eg mineral processing plants in the middle of nowhere) have a different flavour of complexity, although you could argue they are EAMs.
Mincom, a Brisbane based tech company started in the late 80s with a suite for mining, and oil/gas production. At the time, they had 1-10 customers who paid a LOT of money. I am sure they are bigger now, but the fundamentals here are the same: you have to maintain almost every version of product back to the origin, and backport any change, because you can guarantee there is a mine in Kazakstan making a very large amount of profit, which is unwilling to upgrade, but is willing to pay you to maintain the legacy codebase.
TL;DR -If you support mining, expect to support the FORTRAN code you shipped them in 1960s.
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 cha…
really appreciate you taking the time to write this!
we've started trying to work through adding agents like this: https://x.com/barbinbrad/status/1903047303180464586
the trouble is that there are 1000s of possible mutations -- and the quality of an agent tends to diminsh with the amount of "tools" you give it. i need to figure out the right abstraction for this.
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#48What 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?
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#49What 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?
Basically the core functionality is to track inventory, manage purchase orders in, and sales orders out. Generally that's also linked to accounting so basically as you buy and sell stuff everything is linked to your accounting ledgers.
Then there's MRP (M for manufacturing) which is usually an option - for when stuff that you're selling isn't the same as what you're buying.
So the ERP/MRP manages bills of materials for items (basically parts lists), when you want to sell something you make a sales order, it sees if you have the inventory on hand to actually make the things, and if not you can generate purchase orders, and then once you have everything it can create work orders which basically tell your factory people to go and turn the input parts into a product so you can sell it. Invoices are created from sales orders, and workers time is tracked on the purchase order, so the cost of goods and labour is automatically tracked in your financial reports as well as the revenue etc.
Re: Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years
#50What 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?
It's a type of software that lets business manage and automate core processes in one integrated system. Typically linking finance/accounting with operations like sales, inventory and manufacturing.