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

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

#111

Post by barbinbrad »

progx wrote: post #70

Is this a kind of developer BINGO? ;-) "Techstack Remix – framework Typescript – language Tailwind – styling Radix UI - behavior Supabase - database Supabase – auth Upstash - cache Trigger - jobs Resend – email Novu – notifications Vercel – hosting Stripe - billing" And no joke: congrats to your product!

imo, these (supabase, trigger, upstash, novu) are the best hosted solutions in the world, but they are all self-hostable/apache/MIT.

the easiest one to replace is upstash -- the @io/redis is super easy to switch out -- i think the APIs are the same. but the others encapsulate an insane amount of complexity. my thinking is, if i -- as a fairly competent software engineer -- don't have the bandwidth to sysadmin 10 services -- how is someone whose running a manufacturing going to have the bandwidth.

the setup does suck, but imo it's the best solution for bang-for-the-buck long-term. interested to hear your thoughts!

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

#112

Post by FrustratedMonky »

on_the_train wrote: post #53
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?

I've worked on a erp for a short while and I genuinely still don't know. The amount of bullshit surrounding them is certainly staggering. I now work on a large company that is about to introduce a large new erp system and is not only investing billions into that change with the mother of all vendor lock ins; but we're also internally transforming the company so that the erp will work. But no, we can't afford the two…

Can you say who? Curious who in todays market is spending billions on a new ERP. I'd think the market is pretty dry right now.

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

#113

Post by barbinbrad »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #87

While we're on the topic of ERP: I have noticed that, in 2025, many small businesses still use Excel. Is there an underserved market? Or simply a "tarpit idea" (deceptively attractive but actually unscalable, time-consuming) I asked 5 friends who are business owners and 5 who are working for SMEs. None of them use "apps". The best they use is accounting app.

founder here. i often advise people to use excel (or some web-based). it's excellent software, and often the simplest way to solve a problem. it just gets untenable as the company gets bigger.

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

#114

Post by robertlagrant »

rancar2 wrote: post #96
barbinbrad wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

really well said, imo! it's interesting how there's two views of ERP. one is a G/L + anything needed to support it. and the other is more of a tool that supports operations and planning. i started with a G/L, but have kept it hidden even now, because my thought it that everything else should be good first, and support the G/L second.

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?

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

#115

Post by barbinbrad »

hedshodd wrote: post #67

Hm, interesting. With how slow the testimonial carousel on the web page is though, I don't have much confidence that Carbon is performant either. How many pieces of that (frankly massive) techstack require dedicated network trips?

We try to hit the cache as much as possible, and all fetching is done in parallel with Remix. We try to make heavy use of their defer function to only block on the most important data, and await the other data. Remix has the option to merge all parallel requests into a single fetch, but it didn't work for us because we use a hybrid strategy for hosting (where the most common pages are served from v8 edge functions and the less common stuff is served by node functions). The reason we don't put everything (basically) into the edge runtime is because vercel only gives you 2MB of code in the edge runtime before you have to pay HUGE money. But I've definitely put a lot of thought into the performance, so I hope it's great.

I'm surprised the carousel is slow, it's just framer motion. https://github.com/crbnos/www/blob/24d2b59150fc21e6b9c9df3b4...

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

#116

Post by barbinbrad »

barbinbrad wrote: post #115
hedshodd wrote: post #67

Hm, interesting. With how slow the testimonial carousel on the web page is though, I don't have much confidence that Carbon is performant either. How many pieces of that (frankly massive) techstack require dedicated network trips?

We try to hit the cache as much as possible, and all fetching is done in parallel with Remix. We try to make heavy use of their defer function to only block on the most important data, and await the other data. Remix has the option to merge all parallel requests into a single fetch, but it didn't work for us because we use a hybrid strategy for hosting (where the most common pages are served from v8 edge functions an…

EDIT: i'm going to remove the framer motion -- you're right. it's not helping. i've also got to optimize these images, but that's for another day.

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

#117

Post by monatron »

barbinbrad wrote: post #24
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.

yeah, good point. the docs could definitely use some work. check this out if you're interested. it's not complete, but it goes through the software pretty well: https://learn.carbon.ms i don't know if you build anything custom, but we do have a configurator

Did you folks roll this yourself? I like the learning platform and was trying to figure out what you've might have used to build it.

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

#118

Post by benchly »

barbinbrad wrote: post #107
benchly wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good questions. I'd like to add some, if you don't mind. How does it stack up against Sage? Expanding on "what is the deployment situation," how long should it be expected to take for full conversion to the Carbon platform from the described situation of discordant software that has been entrenched in a particular business's practice for decades?

hey guys -- founder here. here's a little bit about me, and why i decided to build this: https://carbon.ms/#memo re: sage, i'd say that sage is well-known as being a great general purpose accounting software for multi-location, and multi-entity businesses. but i don't know of many manufacturers running on sage. re: erpnext, also great. i love their open source model, their developer ecosystem, and great documentation…

Interesting, since the past two manufacturers I have worked for in the last 16 years both have Sage as their primary ERP...BUT that directly resulted in them needing a bunch of other software strapped to the side of it to get things done, which sounds exactly like the problem Carbon was made to solve.

I had even taken it upon myself to develop a (very rudimentary, but functional) piece of software to manage the Service Department of my current employer, since RMAs/Repairs were still being handled with paper and email when I arrived a few years ago, Sage apparently lacking a suitable module as well as the looming shadow of "that's the way we've always done it" thinking.

Carbon looks like it would trim a lot of the thorns my current employer gets hung up on, but it would take some serious convincing to migrate over given the entrenchment of old and comfortable habits, inefficient though they may be.

Anyway, thanks for the response, I know you folks are busy.

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

#120

Post by barbinbrad »

benchly wrote: post #118
barbinbrad wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hey guys -- founder here. here's a little bit about me, and why i decided to build this: https://carbon.ms/#memo re: sage, i'd say that sage is well-known as being a great general purpose accounting software for multi-location, and multi-entity businesses. but i don't know of many manufacturers running on sage. re: erpnext, also great. i love their open source model, their developer ecosystem, and great documentation…

Interesting, since the past two manufacturers I have worked for in the last 16 years both have Sage as their primary ERP...BUT that directly resulted in them needing a bunch of other software strapped to the side of it to get things done, which sounds exactly like the problem Carbon was made to solve. I had even taken it upon myself to develop a (very rudimentary, but functional) piece of software to manage the Servi…

i appreciate you talking through it with me! i only have my limited experiences, and the term ERP is pretty fuzzy -- a CFO's view is a lot different than a head of production.

a sage integration is actually at the top of our roadmap: https://github.com/orgs/crbnos/projects/1/views/1

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