Process as competitive advantage is an ace point. Most companies fail from mismanagement. Competitor teardowns is another good one, but what information do you use for that? How do you determine who their suppliers are?
It depends what you're manufacturing, but the obvious answer is probably either • visit their website • buying their product and looking it up the parts online • talk to your vendors For the last one, this is particularly relevant if you're buying in a market with few suppliers.
How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
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Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#12Hi Johnny! Great to see you on HN... and great article about some of the challenges with manufacturing!
Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#13Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#14.... and you are going to fuck things up anyways. But hopefully not in a terminal way. Some fuckups are learning opportunities, some fuckups are because you don't learn the right things from previous "learning opportunities".
Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#15Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#16"Figure out software after everything else" I also work at a manufacturing startup ( https://markforged.com ) and I disagree. Manufacturing is ancient. Software as a field has been around for 45 years (give or take). If you're not working at a pure software company, the software for your particular field is probably in its infancy. If you're looking to innovate, it is orders of magnitude more fruitful to look to the…
Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#17"Figure out software after everything else" I also work at a manufacturing startup ( https://markforged.com ) and I disagree. Manufacturing is ancient. Software as a field has been around for 45 years (give or take). If you're not working at a pure software company, the software for your particular field is probably in its infancy. If you're looking to innovate, it is orders of magnitude more fruitful to look to the…
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/13/how-to-ship-anythin...
How many companies hired temps to fill out forms for these types of tasks? Plenty I'm sure!
Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#18"Figure out software after everything else" I also work at a manufacturing startup ( https://markforged.com ) and I disagree. Manufacturing is ancient. Software as a field has been around for 45 years (give or take). If you're not working at a pure software company, the software for your particular field is probably in its infancy. If you're looking to innovate, it is orders of magnitude more fruitful to look to the…
Your software will only be as good as your process. There are mid-market ERPs that are 30 years old or more (specifically, Dynamics NAV comes to mind). These software solutions implement the processes that have been honed by humans for more than a thousand years. It is much easier to innovate elsewhere. I am curious which specific ERP packages you have found to be innovative.
Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#19"Figure out software after everything else" I also work at a manufacturing startup ( https://markforged.com ) and I disagree. Manufacturing is ancient. Software as a field has been around for 45 years (give or take). If you're not working at a pure software company, the software for your particular field is probably in its infancy. If you're looking to innovate, it is orders of magnitude more fruitful to look to the…
A simple example from my personal life is writing down exercises I do at the gym. I was surprised by how many different type of exercises there are. At first it was just "lat pull down, 80 pounds, 3 sets, 10 reps". Then I tracked different manufacturers, to stay on top of machine differences. Then I started tracking number of attempted reps, along with reps at lower weight. Then I made a note for weights per arm, for machines with independent weights on each side. Then I took into account the base weight for the bar. I could add features forever.
To manage the complexity, I started looking at software to help. I decided to scrap the idea of building software in favor of writing exercises on a sticky note I stuck to my wallet, and later migrating the data to a "good enough" spreadsheet.
Software is meant to serve us. If you let it take over, it will. Manufacturing benefits from software in places, but sometimes a pen, sticky, and spreadsheet is all you really need, and if you outgrow it, you'll understand exactly how software can help.
My uncle and 101 year old grandfather make machine parts in a shop with a bunch of old school analog stuff. They have a computer for a milling machine. It all works great.
Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#20Do you find merging the software and process/manufacturing side of things to be advantageous? I'm a process/chemical engineer getting into software and am wondering if it's worth splitting time.
1) Product (will people buy it?)
2) Process (can you scale it?)
3) Software (now scale it)