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Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#11

Post by SteveGreaseBoss »

tylerben wrote: post #7

Loved reading this! What part of your product has received the most traction/excitement from customers? The hardware or the software/reporting piece?

Our customers like the visibility the software brings to their operation. They keep inventing uses for the data we hadn't thought of - we had a customer who owns an intermittantly used shiploader request a report showing the last greasing of each zerk to be outputted 2 hours before the ship arrives in port, this is so they can prevent unforseen breakdowns while the shiploader is in operation and the costs are high

We still have a few iteration cycles on the hardware ahead of us - reducing size and weight and improving form factor.

Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#12

Post by dkhenry »

How do you perform the initial rollout and configuration ? Does someone have to manually associate the RFID with the specific zerk and machine and set up a maintenance schedule? How do you handle machines where greasing is a function of hours of operation and not wall clock time ?

Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#14

Post by ayewo »

SteveGreaseBoss wrote: post #3
dsugarman wrote: post #2

Congrats on the launch and excellent writeup, I learned something new today!

cheers, its one of those things that you would never imagine is still a problem

Echoing the parent, your intro is very well written.

I'm surprised I read till the end, even though I had no clue about zerks, until I read your launch post.

Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#15

Post by xupybd »

SteveGreaseBoss wrote: post #3
dsugarman wrote: post #2

Congrats on the launch and excellent writeup, I learned something new today!

cheers, its one of those things that you would never imagine is still a problem

I'm currently trying to track down simple software to monitor our machine maintenance. Most of the products are either way to complex or far too much work to enter the data. So paper records become the best solution. Low cost, low complexity, and agile.

Your system looks amazing and solves the complexity and data entry problem. I wish it was just grease we need to track.

Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#16

Post by SteveGreaseBoss »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #5

What kind of customer lock-in do you have? Is the API/data format open or closed? Can I easily export my data? As a customer, I'd be concerned about longevity and data loss if/when you go away or pivot. Knowing that I could export my data, and re-implement my own backend using your open data standard if needed, would go a long way to easing my concerns. Most customers won't go through the effort to build their own so…

Thanks for the feedback, I think you are raising a valid point

We have built the platform with APIs in anticipaction of integrations with SAP, Pronto, etc. We have also built in functionality to export data out to CSV files. Our market is a mix of big corporates who want the integration with SAP and never want to see out platform and small guys who run their maintenance from checklists and like the platform.

In regards to customer lock in, the system requires physical tags to be fitted to the zerks. Fitting the tags costs man-hours and they only work with our head unit. We think this protects us in the short term, longer term the capture, hosting and reporting on the data is our lock in.

Our customers are not the types to go out and build their own software - they may copy the head unit though..

Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#18

Post by SteveGreaseBoss »

xupybd wrote: post #15
SteveGreaseBoss wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cheers, its one of those things that you would never imagine is still a problem

I'm currently trying to track down simple software to monitor our machine maintenance. Most of the products are either way to complex or far too much work to enter the data. So paper records become the best solution. Low cost, low complexity, and agile. Your system looks amazing and solves the complexity and data entry problem. I wish it was just grease we need to track.

thanks.

We saw early on that if we were going to add a computer to grease gun, it had to be very simple and never crash or lose connection. Our operators have zero tolerance for complexity.

What are you trying to track?

Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#19

Post by SteveGreaseBoss »

xupybd wrote: post #10

Have you tried selling to the wood products manufacturing industry? Not as much money involved but companies like Borgs have sites all over and hundreds of machines that need greasing. Many of these machines have auto greasers, can you integrate with those to monitor if the grease is flowing?

I will check out Borgs, honestly they were not on my radar.

The autoluber question comes up all the time, initially we are targeting the zerks/grease nipples that are too low value or physically cannot be fitted with an autoluber. We are also targeting autoluber refills.

We have some specific autoluber products on our roadmap so we can have all greasing in our GreaseCloud

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