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How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

johnnybowman.org

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Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#61

Post by maxerickson »

Animats wrote: post #32
avn2109 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "...No need to retool for the 2017 Lettuce." These indoor farm outfits have nothing to do with lettuce. There's a reason they're building them in/around NYC, aka in the densest concentration of pot smokers the world has ever seen, far from Humboldt county's fields and Colorado's manual hydroponics. The business model is just to get the automation figured out with some low-value crop, e.g. salad greens, while waiti…

Yes, I've wondered about all the interest in lettuce and kale. I'd expect more interest in growing higher-value seasonal crops such as blueberries or strawberries.

Lettuce can be grown at full blast and harvested in a month. For seasonal fruits there has to either be a way to trick the plant into skipping the dormant period or a dormant period.

The marijuana thing doesn't make a lot of sense to me, it's not fragile and has relatively high value compared to the cost of shipping.

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#62

Post by coldtea »

kriro wrote: post #40
huhtenberg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Patenting something you _ copied _ ... Strawman. That's not what your OP's quote says.

The OP describes competition teardown and learning from what they do, essentially reverse engineering their processes and also applying things from other domains to your own domains. I think seeking patent protection for your own processes when you actively recommend tearing down processes of your competition is a bit odd. """borrowing a proven approach from a parallel industry""" I've translated that to copy+improve…

>I've translated that to copy+improve. I mean what if that approach was patent protected? How would you go about borrowing that proven approach?

That's why he talks about borrowing it from ANOTHER domain, where even if its patented, it doesn't apply to yours.

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#63

Post by LeanderK »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #57

I wish HN wouldn't use this language in its headlines. It means I can't read it when my little kids are nearby.

you could raise them to deal with this kind of language from day 1, we do this in germany and it works out fine. Swearing is just an rhetorical device that's appropriate in some situations and not appropriate in others, like calling somebody by their last vs by their first name. I have never understood the americans obsession with swearing (I am just guessing, sry if your not an american).

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#64

Post by rlonstein »

rmah wrote: post #59
michaelt wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think this explains the reports of Toshiba [1] Fujitsu and Olympus [2] growing lettuce in clean rooms? I was under the impression that weed legalisation was low on the political agenda in Japan. It might be that these producers expect higher human-labour costs, making automation more profitable - such as due to rising nationalism reducing the supply of cheap migrant labour. [1] http://qz.com/295936/toshibas-hi…

Japan is a different situation. There is very little arable farmland left underutilized in Japan. There are millions of acres of farmland sitting dormant in the USA.

> There are millions of acres of farmland sitting dormant in the USA.

However in the higher energy cost future the production, processing, and distribution of that farm product to a far away base of consumers is not viable. The various direct and indirect subsidies and availability of relatively cheap fuel, which is itself subsidized, make it possible to get fresh foods to urban consumers. It seems like a smart play to plan for arcologies or reuse of decayed urban cores around food production.

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#65

Post by JoeAltmaier »

rlonstein wrote: post #64
rmah wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan is a different situation. There is very little arable farmland left underutilized in Japan. There are millions of acres of farmland sitting dormant in the USA.

> There are millions of acres of farmland sitting dormant in the USA. However in the higher energy cost future the production, processing, and distribution of that farm product to a far away base of consumers is not viable. The various direct and indirect subsidies and availability of relatively cheap fuel, which is itself subsidized, make it possible to get fresh foods to urban consumers. It seems like a smart play…

As I understand it, the whole aim of agriculture is reduced energy per unit output. The reason some US farmland lies dormant is, its slightly less productive per unit effort.

Further, any other high-tech food solution (electric boxes that grow lettuce under lights etc) is more energy-expensive. Can't bean letting Mother Nature do all the work, and just driving by later and picking up the food.

Also there is a surfeit of farmland (read: food production) in the US. Iowa produces enough calories to feed 2 United States all by itself. The feds pay to leave 10% of Iowa fallow. Not as a soil-conservation effort (though that is a result) but instead to control supply. Which is yards cheaper than trying to support prices. So that's part of it too.

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#67

Post by rlonstein »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #65
rlonstein wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are millions of acres of farmland sitting dormant in the USA. However in the higher energy cost future the production, processing, and distribution of that farm product to a far away base of consumers is not viable. The various direct and indirect subsidies and availability of relatively cheap fuel, which is itself subsidized, make it possible to get fresh foods to urban consumers. It seems like a smart play…

As I understand it, the whole aim of agriculture is reduced energy per unit output. The reason some US farmland lies dormant is, its slightly less productive per unit effort. Further, any other high-tech food solution (electric boxes that grow lettuce under lights etc) is more energy-expensive. Can't bean letting Mother Nature do all the work, and just driving by later and picking up the food. Also there is a surfeit…

> Further, any other high-tech food solution (electric boxes that grow lettuce under lights etc) is more energy-expensive. Can't bean letting Mother Nature do all the work, and just driving by later and picking up the food.

I like the simplicity of that description-- which might be true for grains, where huge tractors and combines can roll through the fields-- but glosses over all the work done on a farm for other products. It also ignores that there are significant risks to letting Mother Nature take her course where as indoor farming can control light cycle and intensity, watering and humidity, CO2 level, temperature, and (probably) greatly increase density while (maybe) minimizing pest control and herbicides.

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#68

Post by moron4hire »

Strangework wrote: post #26

So wild! Such a surprise to find this on the front page of Hacker News. If it weren't for the author's username, I might have missed this gem. I had worked at Edenworks as a software engineer for a few years, alongside Johnny. I don't pretend to know enough to speak on manufacturing itself, but Johnny's remarks on software development are spot-on. When I had come onboard, I had naively suspected a typical software st…

This is only because the electrical and mechanical engineering realms have been resistant to change. There are rapid prototyping techniques that can be used to improve the hardware side, and so much of the latest systems are built largely in software anyway. There are still hardware shops debating whether or not source control is a good idea, "we tried CVS once, it didn't work."

The quality of a system is a direct function of the speed of the testing cycle. To argue "slow, methodical, reasoning" is to argue against quality.

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#69

Post by JoeAltmaier »

rlonstein wrote: post #67
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, the whole aim of agriculture is reduced energy per unit output. The reason some US farmland lies dormant is, its slightly less productive per unit effort. Further, any other high-tech food solution (electric boxes that grow lettuce under lights etc) is more energy-expensive. Can't bean letting Mother Nature do all the work, and just driving by later and picking up the food. Also there is a surfeit…

> Further, any other high-tech food solution (electric boxes that grow lettuce under lights etc) is more energy-expensive. Can't bean letting Mother Nature do all the work, and just driving by later and picking up the food. I like the simplicity of that description-- which might be true for grains, where huge tractors and combines can roll through the fields-- but glosses over all the work done on a farm for other pr…

Economies of scale are hard to beat. The whole point of agricultural science for a century is reducing costs per yield. One farmer and 1000 acres are going to beat any room full of indoor-farming boxes and controls, right?

Field applications are really very cheap - a few dollars 'cides per acre total. And yield 10K's of kilos of product.

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#70

Post by smallnamespace »

fencepost wrote: post #9

From the article: "A good, defensible manufacturing strategy is one where you’re applying and protecting (ideally via patent) a faster, cheaper, more reliable way of doing something in your industry, by borrowing a proven approach from a parallel industry." If you're looking for a formalized system designed to help with some of this, take a look at TRIZ[1][2]. I'll just steal one note from the "What Is TRIZ" article…

In your opinion, is manufacturing in general one field where patents are a net positive (to innovation, economic efficiency, etc.)?

If so, do you think it's because manufacturing is a more well-defined and mature field than software engineering?

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