9 ms·

How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

297 points by johnnybowman 10y ago

edblarney 10y ago
"It’s easy to find new ways to make shit more complicated. It’s hard to find new ways to make shit simpler. " Applies to software just as well :)
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  its just a general life lesson. "Everything shoukd be made to be as simple as possible, but no simpler." -einstein this shouldn't detract from the complexities of manufacturing vs software
  - voidlogic 10y ago
    Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle
- RangerScience 10y ago
  I go for the "reverse watchmaker", referencing this: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2344 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2344 You want, in priority order: 1) The least interactions 2) The simplest interactions 3) The simplest components
AbrahamParangi 10y ago
"Figure out software after everything else" I also work at a manufacturing startup (https://markforged.com 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 software improvements which can be made to your technology because orders of magnitude fewer man-hours have been spent by humans so far solving those problems. "In indoor farming, we see a lot of competition focus on how data will drive yield increases, yet they haven’t figured out how to regulate air temperature in their facility." I have to assume that these competitors are looking for the innovations that will make them 10x more competitive. Startups are dead by default. Innovation is the only way to survive.
- rfrank 10y ago
  I think there's some truth in both perspectives, and the balance of process vs. software improvement comes down to how aggressively you need to compete on price. On cheaper stuff where prices is a bigger determining factor, it makes sense to me to focus on process and driving down cost. For markets where that's less of an issue, software innovation is the way to go. The Here One headphones [1] seem like they manage the balance pretty well. The Onyx One is super cool by the way. 1: https://hereplus.me/ https://hereplus.me/
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Your post made me think of an old Joel on software post where they wrote some access thingy to print customs labels. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/13/how-to-ship-anything/ 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!
- banjomascot 10y ago
  I disagree with you - Figure out your process and automate with software. 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.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    Perhaps the commenter meant the software that runs on the product (if it's a product that runs software)?
    - banjomascot 10y ago
      If that is the case, I find it hard to disagree with the comment then.
  - kriro 10y ago
dilemma 10y ago
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?
- dylandrop 10y ago
  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.
  - johnnybowman 10y ago
    agreed and also trade shows. Simply asking "who are you a supplier for in Industry X" is surprisingly fruitful.
- esm5 10y ago
  I was part of the founding team of a power electronics startup. We constantly tore down our competitors' products to estimate their costs, to see how they corrected design flaws between releases, and also to understand which component suppliers they chose to include (this is a proxy for passing their reliability testing).
kylehotchkiss 10y ago
Hi Johnny! Great to see you on HN... and great article about some of the challenges with manufacturing!
- johnnybowman 10y ago
  Hi Kyle!
bbcbasic 10y ago
Any need for the F word?
- tubularhells 10y ago
  Oh for fuck's sake, stop it.
  - radisb 10y ago
    c'mon, give him a fucking break.
fencepost 10y ago
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 - "Somebody someplace has already solved this problem (or one very similar to it.) Creativity is now finding that solution and adapting it to this particular problem." A big part of the basic tooling for TRIZ is the results of people going through a huge mass of patents looking for patterns of problem categories and how they were solved. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ [2] https://triz-journal.com/triz-what-is-triz/ https://triz-journal.com/triz-what-is-triz/
- leodeid 10y ago
  I read the wikipedia page and that "what is TRIZ" article, and I still don't understand what it is. At times, it sounds like an automated program (especially with statements like "More than three million patents have been analyzed to discover the patterns that predict breakthrough solutions to problems"). But at other points, it seems like a human-centric problem solving strategy, but without the strategy. It describes problems and then solutions without any discussion of the in-between. Do you have experience with TRIZ? What "is it" to you?
  - amk_ 10y ago
    They teach you this stuff in product design classes. TRIZ is a way of breaking down an engineering design problem into the thing you want to change, and the thing you can't change (a "contradiction"), then resolving it. A "TRIZ Matrix" is a reference tool that suggests ways of resolving conflicts between common design parameters (strength, weight, durability, manufacturing tolerance, etc.) based on a number of principles that have been validated over the years, like "nesting" or "prior action". Over the years, 40 standard principles (and 39 parameters) have emerged. They all have somewhat cryptic, consultant-handbooky names but make sense when you see some examples[1]. E.g., you have a beam and you want to make it stronger, but can't make it any thicker. You consult your matrix for "strength" vs "area" and get some suggestions such as "use composite materials". Or, applying the principle more generally, you try to extract techniques from the patent library or publications that resolve the problem. [1]: https://www.triz.co.uk/files/triz_40_inventive_principles_with_examplesfeb15.pdf https://www.triz.co.uk/files/triz_40_inventive_principles_wi...
kiresays 10y ago
Do 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.
- banjomascot 10y ago
  In this order: 1) Product (will people buy it?) 2) Process (can you scale it?) 3) Software (now scale it)
keithnz 10y ago
having been through a number of tech businesses who do manufacturing... ( https://www.taitradio.com https://www.taitradio.com http://www.compacsort.com http://www.compacsort.com and now http://www.outpostcentral.com http://www.outpostcentral.com ) the key thing to me is how fast you can innovate which is all about how quick you can try ideas. As a startup, contract manufacture as much as possible so you can scale your production up and down. Definitely focus on your processes, kill bad product lines as quick as possible. Spend the time on making things robust, keep things as simple as possible as long as possible. Sell and promote your brand as much as possible. .... 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".
PascLeRasc 10y ago
It's always nice to see hardware/not-SaaS content on here.
Strangework 10y ago
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 startup experience; rampant technophilia with an obsession for integrating the freshest software technologies. If 'Software is King' is true everywhere else, why shouldn't it be true here? Edenworks is not a software startup, however, and it's important to realize that. Manufacturing is an entirely different beast, which makes steady, deliberate movements (i.e. it doesn't move fast, and it shouldn't break things). When the main product being developed is a tangible system, redos are way more costly. Adding flashy software features does not expedite this; lashing the latest and greatest Javascript library onto the fronted does not add value... not reliable value anyways. When it comes to developing a manufacturing process, software should be flexible and let the process demands come first. The typical workload is more concerned with running test trials than hacking up something new. For me, this realization was more emotional than organizational - sometimes you have to curb your hype. To add real value to the product, I had to watch my ego. In a manufacturing company, the Process is King.
- m_eiman 10y ago
  When the main product being developed is a tangible system, redos are way more costly. Even when primarily doing software, this can come into play. I know of a customer who had about 5000 card readers in an access control system, where bugs in the card reader firmware required a firmware update. Doing this required walking to a reader, unmounting it from the wall, updating the firmware, re-mounting the reader. Rinse and repeat 5000 times. A rough estimate is that upgrading all the readers on the site took about a man-year of technicians walking around updating things. Let's just say that when more bugs were discovered, the customer who paid for it all was less than pleased… Lesson learned: always make secure remote firmware updates possible on your devices.
  - SixSigma 10y ago
    > Lesson learned: always make secure remote firmware updates possible on your devices. Lesson apparently not learned: get it right first time. Software isn't special http://www.gettingitrightfirsttime.com/report/ http://www.gettingitrightfirsttime.com/report/
Animats 10y ago
The startup mentioned is an urban indoor farm for lettuce. As a manufacturing process, it's a good case. One product. Few changes. No need to retool for the 2017 Lettuce. Few operations. (In a manufacturing plant, an "operation" is one step in the process.) This is the best case for classic mechanization. You just need to do the same thing over and over while holding the process parameters within tolerance, and do it cheaply. This indoor farm, EdenWorks, has a nearby competitor, AeroFarms, in Newark.[1] AeroFarms claims to be much bigger, and claims a new patented technology for growing plants on a cloth substrate made from recycled plastic bottles, with the plant roots in a nutrient-enriched spray mist instead of water or soil. (AeroFarms may be exaggerating how far along they are. See Google StreetView.[2]) Welcome to manufacturing, where it's about volume and price. [1] http://aerofarms.com/ http://aerofarms.com/ [2] https://goo.gl/maps/amxpekwPEGr https://goo.gl/maps/amxpekwPEGr
- avn2109 10y ago
  >> "...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 waiting for the legislature to decriminalize. The day Albany finally comes around to the idea, they'll retool for sticky green weed faster than you can pin up a Bob Marley poster. It'll take them about fifteen minutes after the governor's signature dries to get the first pot plants started. The economics could not possibly work out for lettuce alone.
  - chillydawg 10y ago
    Growing ganja is a very different thing to growing lettuce. It takes much longer, there's a lot more considerations around lighting and temperature and the physical size of the crop is vastly different. Harvesting is a totally different process, too. I'm sure some of the stuff learned doing this would be useful, but why not just start an actual robot ganja farm in Colorado now and get growing?
ffwacom 10y ago
"All of these things take time away from getting shit out the door, but they ensure you don’t get fucked. In manufacturing, you optimize for not getting fucked." The language is a giveaway he has been involved in manufacturing
mb_72 10y ago
Although my main gig is software, I've also been manufacturing electronic music gadgets for 15 years. The most significant difference in thinking for me was, for hardware, always keeping in mind "this item is being shipped across the world, must work perfectly upon arrival and for hopefully a long time after that, and is almost impossible to update without the customer incurring hassle or the company incurring expenses". Contrast that to software where problems are generally easily able to be fixed and - most importantly - can be updated almost instantly. Especially after some recently problems with my hardware business that necessitated the return of some units for repair, and the hold-up of manufacturing while we worked out what was wrong, I've come to realise that the easily-updateable nature of modern day software really gives us such power and flexibility, it should never be taken for granted.
unixhero 10y ago
He forgot to mention: Big clients with aggressive legal stange who promise millions then strangle and cancel the contract you had with them when you've sunk 1000s or hours into R&D.
- ju-st 10y ago
  A lesson from history and geopolitics: Never trust more powerful entities.
kriro 10y ago
Very interesting read, especially since I had a production management focus at university that I've only partly used so far (when developing ERP software not when running my own company). """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.""" I very strongly disagree with this and find the thought process very unnatural. Patenting something you copied almost feels like it's against human nature to me. Humans essentially learn via copy and improve. Thankfully business practice patents are not valid in some countries. I also disagree with the thoughts on not focusing on software or at least think the author undervalues the potential role software can play. I think some of the major problems in production management are very ripe for algorithmic innovations. Plant layout planning and job scheduling (basically most operations research) seem very suitable to AI/learning based approaches. Non trivial simulations are also very important for well run production companies (anecdotally, from the ERP development experience).
- huhtenberg 10y ago
  > Patenting something you _ copied _ ... Strawman. That's not what your OP's quote says.
  - kriro 10y ago
    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 mean what if that approach was patent protected? How would you go about borrowing that proven approach?
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >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.
pipio21 10y ago
Yeah, the main difference is that in the Software world companies like google make products in beta form and use their customers as testers. They could improve the product "on the fly". On the other hand in manufacturing having a big recall for a defective or incomplete product usually means "instant bankruptcy". Even big companies like Samsung(Galaxy recall) or Volkswagen(Dieselgate) or BP(Deepwater oil spill) have to suffer immense loses from "moving fast and breaking things".
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  The reason this works for Google but not for manufacturers is because manipulating and transporting electrons is many orders is magnitude cheaper than for atoms.
DougN7 10y ago
Does anyone else get turned off by the needless vulgarity?
DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
I wish HN wouldn't use this language in its headlines. It means I can't read it when my little kids are nearby.
- j2bax 10y ago
  You could use an extension that swaps out swear words for alternatives like "fudge". One of my coworkers used one.
  - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
    Thanks, that's great idea. Will check it out.
- sametmax 10y ago
  You will then have to shut down the whole world around them, because it's not going to become polite any time soon. Or just, you know, teach them how to deal with it instead.
- LeanderK 10y ago
  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).
  - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
    Thanks for the idea. I've considered it. Unfortunately, some of my kids have a propensity for repeating what they read/hear, without consideration for our rules regarding coarse language. So it wouldn't work well in my case. As far as it being "just a[n] rhetorical device", I think we probably have difference in values, which I don't think can be fruitfully discussed in this forum.
    - 10y ago
contingencies 10y ago
Putting aside for a moment the author's experience, our own experience at http://8-food.com/ http://8-food.com/ has been somewhat similar in its difference from conventional startupry but quite distinct in its apparent relationship to conventional manufacturing. We are producing a series of vending-machine-like service locations which automatically prepare and retail hot meals from fresh ingredients. We have of course the manufacturing process for these machines to keep in mind, but in addition the machines themselves are essentially miniature factories and so all of the theory, literature and best practices of the manufacturing economy proper apply - albeit scaled down in time, space and (usually!) cost - to our machines. So far it has been very interesting to read the literature of other engineering disciplines and to translate concepts between them and our experience in software. Thus far I believe there are some great processes that software can teach manufacturing, but also vice versa.

297 points by johnnybowman 10y ago

"It’s easy to find new ways to make shit more complicated. It’s hard to find new ways to make shit simpler. " Applies to software just as well :)

wheelerwj 10y ago
its just a general life lesson. "Everything shoukd be made to be as simple as possible, but no simpler." -einstein this shouldn't detract from the complexities of manufacturing vs software
- voidlogic 10y ago
  Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle
RangerScience 10y ago
I go for the "reverse watchmaker", referencing this: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2344 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2344 You want, in priority order: 1) The least interactions 2) The simplest interactions 3) The simplest components

AbrahamParangi 10y ago

"Figure out software after everything else" I also work at a manufacturing startup (https://markforged.com 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 software improvements which can be made to your technology because orders of magnitude fewer man-hours have been spent by humans so far solving those problems. "In indoor farming, we see a lot of competition focus on how data will drive yield increases, yet they haven’t figured out how to regulate air temperature in their facility." I have to assume that these competitors are looking for the innovations that will make them 10x more competitive. Startups are dead by default. Innovation is the only way to survive.

rfrank 10y ago
I think there's some truth in both perspectives, and the balance of process vs. software improvement comes down to how aggressively you need to compete on price. On cheaper stuff where prices is a bigger determining factor, it makes sense to me to focus on process and driving down cost. For markets where that's less of an issue, software innovation is the way to go. The Here One headphones [1] seem like they manage the balance pretty well. The Onyx One is super cool by the way. 1: https://hereplus.me/ https://hereplus.me/
Spooky23 10y ago
Your post made me think of an old Joel on software post where they wrote some access thingy to print customs labels. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/13/how-to-ship-anything/ 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!
banjomascot 10y ago
I disagree with you - Figure out your process and automate with software. 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.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Perhaps the commenter meant the software that runs on the product (if it's a product that runs software)?
  - banjomascot 10y ago
    If that is the case, I find it hard to disagree with the comment then.
- kriro 10y ago

dilemma 10y ago

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?

dylandrop 10y ago
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.
- johnnybowman 10y ago
  agreed and also trade shows. Simply asking "who are you a supplier for in Industry X" is surprisingly fruitful.
esm5 10y ago
I was part of the founding team of a power electronics startup. We constantly tore down our competitors' products to estimate their costs, to see how they corrected design flaws between releases, and also to understand which component suppliers they chose to include (this is a proxy for passing their reliability testing).

kylehotchkiss 10y ago

Hi Johnny! Great to see you on HN... and great article about some of the challenges with manufacturing!

johnnybowman 10y ago
Hi Kyle!

bbcbasic 10y ago

Any need for the F word?

tubularhells 10y ago
Oh for fuck's sake, stop it.
- radisb 10y ago
  c'mon, give him a fucking break.

fencepost 10y ago

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 - "Somebody someplace has already solved this problem (or one very similar to it.) Creativity is now finding that solution and adapting it to this particular problem." A big part of the basic tooling for TRIZ is the results of people going through a huge mass of patents looking for patterns of problem categories and how they were solved. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ [2] https://triz-journal.com/triz-what-is-triz/ https://triz-journal.com/triz-what-is-triz/

leodeid 10y ago
I read the wikipedia page and that "what is TRIZ" article, and I still don't understand what it is. At times, it sounds like an automated program (especially with statements like "More than three million patents have been analyzed to discover the patterns that predict breakthrough solutions to problems"). But at other points, it seems like a human-centric problem solving strategy, but without the strategy. It describes problems and then solutions without any discussion of the in-between. Do you have experience with TRIZ? What "is it" to you?
- amk_ 10y ago
  They teach you this stuff in product design classes. TRIZ is a way of breaking down an engineering design problem into the thing you want to change, and the thing you can't change (a "contradiction"), then resolving it. A "TRIZ Matrix" is a reference tool that suggests ways of resolving conflicts between common design parameters (strength, weight, durability, manufacturing tolerance, etc.) based on a number of principles that have been validated over the years, like "nesting" or "prior action". Over the years, 40 standard principles (and 39 parameters) have emerged. They all have somewhat cryptic, consultant-handbooky names but make sense when you see some examples[1]. E.g., you have a beam and you want to make it stronger, but can't make it any thicker. You consult your matrix for "strength" vs "area" and get some suggestions such as "use composite materials". Or, applying the principle more generally, you try to extract techniques from the patent library or publications that resolve the problem. [1]: https://www.triz.co.uk/files/triz_40_inventive_principles_with_examplesfeb15.pdf https://www.triz.co.uk/files/triz_40_inventive_principles_wi...

kiresays 10y ago

Do 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.

banjomascot 10y ago
In this order: 1) Product (will people buy it?) 2) Process (can you scale it?) 3) Software (now scale it)

keithnz 10y ago

having been through a number of tech businesses who do manufacturing... ( https://www.taitradio.com https://www.taitradio.com http://www.compacsort.com http://www.compacsort.com and now http://www.outpostcentral.com http://www.outpostcentral.com ) the key thing to me is how fast you can innovate which is all about how quick you can try ideas. As a startup, contract manufacture as much as possible so you can scale your production up and down. Definitely focus on your processes, kill bad product lines as quick as possible. Spend the time on making things robust, keep things as simple as possible as long as possible. Sell and promote your brand as much as possible. .... 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".

PascLeRasc 10y ago

It's always nice to see hardware/not-SaaS content on here.

Strangework 10y ago

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 startup experience; rampant technophilia with an obsession for integrating the freshest software technologies. If 'Software is King' is true everywhere else, why shouldn't it be true here? Edenworks is not a software startup, however, and it's important to realize that. Manufacturing is an entirely different beast, which makes steady, deliberate movements (i.e. it doesn't move fast, and it shouldn't break things). When the main product being developed is a tangible system, redos are way more costly. Adding flashy software features does not expedite this; lashing the latest and greatest Javascript library onto the fronted does not add value... not reliable value anyways. When it comes to developing a manufacturing process, software should be flexible and let the process demands come first. The typical workload is more concerned with running test trials than hacking up something new. For me, this realization was more emotional than organizational - sometimes you have to curb your hype. To add real value to the product, I had to watch my ego. In a manufacturing company, the Process is King.

m_eiman 10y ago
When the main product being developed is a tangible system, redos are way more costly. Even when primarily doing software, this can come into play. I know of a customer who had about 5000 card readers in an access control system, where bugs in the card reader firmware required a firmware update. Doing this required walking to a reader, unmounting it from the wall, updating the firmware, re-mounting the reader. Rinse and repeat 5000 times. A rough estimate is that upgrading all the readers on the site took about a man-year of technicians walking around updating things. Let's just say that when more bugs were discovered, the customer who paid for it all was less than pleased… Lesson learned: always make secure remote firmware updates possible on your devices.
- SixSigma 10y ago
  > Lesson learned: always make secure remote firmware updates possible on your devices. Lesson apparently not learned: get it right first time. Software isn't special http://www.gettingitrightfirsttime.com/report/ http://www.gettingitrightfirsttime.com/report/

Animats 10y ago

The startup mentioned is an urban indoor farm for lettuce. As a manufacturing process, it's a good case. One product. Few changes. No need to retool for the 2017 Lettuce. Few operations. (In a manufacturing plant, an "operation" is one step in the process.) This is the best case for classic mechanization. You just need to do the same thing over and over while holding the process parameters within tolerance, and do it cheaply. This indoor farm, EdenWorks, has a nearby competitor, AeroFarms, in Newark.[1] AeroFarms claims to be much bigger, and claims a new patented technology for growing plants on a cloth substrate made from recycled plastic bottles, with the plant roots in a nutrient-enriched spray mist instead of water or soil. (AeroFarms may be exaggerating how far along they are. See Google StreetView.[2]) Welcome to manufacturing, where it's about volume and price. [1] http://aerofarms.com/ http://aerofarms.com/ [2] https://goo.gl/maps/amxpekwPEGr https://goo.gl/maps/amxpekwPEGr

avn2109 10y ago
>> "...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 waiting for the legislature to decriminalize. The day Albany finally comes around to the idea, they'll retool for sticky green weed faster than you can pin up a Bob Marley poster. It'll take them about fifteen minutes after the governor's signature dries to get the first pot plants started. The economics could not possibly work out for lettuce alone.
- chillydawg 10y ago
  Growing ganja is a very different thing to growing lettuce. It takes much longer, there's a lot more considerations around lighting and temperature and the physical size of the crop is vastly different. Harvesting is a totally different process, too. I'm sure some of the stuff learned doing this would be useful, but why not just start an actual robot ganja farm in Colorado now and get growing?

ffwacom 10y ago

"All of these things take time away from getting shit out the door, but they ensure you don’t get fucked. In manufacturing, you optimize for not getting fucked." The language is a giveaway he has been involved in manufacturing

mb_72 10y ago

Although my main gig is software, I've also been manufacturing electronic music gadgets for 15 years. The most significant difference in thinking for me was, for hardware, always keeping in mind "this item is being shipped across the world, must work perfectly upon arrival and for hopefully a long time after that, and is almost impossible to update without the customer incurring hassle or the company incurring expenses". Contrast that to software where problems are generally easily able to be fixed and - most importantly - can be updated almost instantly. Especially after some recently problems with my hardware business that necessitated the return of some units for repair, and the hold-up of manufacturing while we worked out what was wrong, I've come to realise that the easily-updateable nature of modern day software really gives us such power and flexibility, it should never be taken for granted.

unixhero 10y ago

He forgot to mention: Big clients with aggressive legal stange who promise millions then strangle and cancel the contract you had with them when you've sunk 1000s or hours into R&D.

ju-st 10y ago
A lesson from history and geopolitics: Never trust more powerful entities.

kriro 10y ago

Very interesting read, especially since I had a production management focus at university that I've only partly used so far (when developing ERP software not when running my own company). """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.""" I very strongly disagree with this and find the thought process very unnatural. Patenting something you copied almost feels like it's against human nature to me. Humans essentially learn via copy and improve. Thankfully business practice patents are not valid in some countries. I also disagree with the thoughts on not focusing on software or at least think the author undervalues the potential role software can play. I think some of the major problems in production management are very ripe for algorithmic innovations. Plant layout planning and job scheduling (basically most operations research) seem very suitable to AI/learning based approaches. Non trivial simulations are also very important for well run production companies (anecdotally, from the ERP development experience).

huhtenberg 10y ago
> Patenting something you _ copied _ ... Strawman. That's not what your OP's quote says.
- kriro 10y ago
  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 mean what if that approach was patent protected? How would you go about borrowing that proven approach?
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >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.

pipio21 10y ago

Yeah, the main difference is that in the Software world companies like google make products in beta form and use their customers as testers. They could improve the product "on the fly". On the other hand in manufacturing having a big recall for a defective or incomplete product usually means "instant bankruptcy". Even big companies like Samsung(Galaxy recall) or Volkswagen(Dieselgate) or BP(Deepwater oil spill) have to suffer immense loses from "moving fast and breaking things".

smallnamespace 10y ago
The reason this works for Google but not for manufacturers is because manipulating and transporting electrons is many orders is magnitude cheaper than for atoms.

DougN7 10y ago

Does anyone else get turned off by the needless vulgarity?

DoofusOfDeath 10y ago

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

j2bax 10y ago
You could use an extension that swaps out swear words for alternatives like "fudge". One of my coworkers used one.
- DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
  Thanks, that's great idea. Will check it out.
sametmax 10y ago
You will then have to shut down the whole world around them, because it's not going to become polite any time soon. Or just, you know, teach them how to deal with it instead.
LeanderK 10y ago
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).
- DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
  Thanks for the idea. I've considered it. Unfortunately, some of my kids have a propensity for repeating what they read/hear, without consideration for our rules regarding coarse language. So it wouldn't work well in my case. As far as it being "just a[n] rhetorical device", I think we probably have difference in values, which I don't think can be fruitfully discussed in this forum.
  - 10y ago

contingencies 10y ago

Putting aside for a moment the author's experience, our own experience at http://8-food.com/ http://8-food.com/ has been somewhat similar in its difference from conventional startupry but quite distinct in its apparent relationship to conventional manufacturing. We are producing a series of vending-machine-like service locations which automatically prepare and retail hot meals from fresh ingredients. We have of course the manufacturing process for these machines to keep in mind, but in addition the machines themselves are essentially miniature factories and so all of the theory, literature and best practices of the manufacturing economy proper apply - albeit scaled down in time, space and (usually!) cost - to our machines. So far it has been very interesting to read the literature of other engineering disciplines and to translate concepts between them and our experience in software. Thus far I believe there are some great processes that software can teach manufacturing, but also vice versa.