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We make interactive training materials for people working in the heavy industries (Mining, Oil, Forestry, Pulp & Paper, etc). A typical user is male, in his 30s

We make interactive training materials for people working in the heavy industries (Mining, Oil, Forestry, Pulp & Paper, etc). A typical user is male, in his 30s or 40s, with no interest in technology, a short attention span and temper, low self-esteem with respect to their work, and a preference for the "physical" over anything "abstract". We train them to effectively operate and (especially) maintain/repair the equipment they use in their work. This equipment is the heavy machinery they tell you not to operate when you take medication, or the sort you see on the Discovery Channel when they talk about the world's biggest construction projects. Machines described by schematics with thousands of components, that come in manuals thousands of pages long. These machines have hydraulic, electrical, and process (computational) systems that all interact in a complex ballet of physical forces and remarkable engineering. And they all break down — constantly. When the equipment fails, these lumberjack-types have to look up the schematics and deduce exactly what broke on their machine. An hour of downtime can cost tens of thousands of dollars, so they're under tremendous pressure to get repairs done quickly. However, they aren't analytical thinkers (in the typical case), so they aren't great at deducing the root cause of failure. They resort to "part-swapping", where they replace components until the problem goes away. Some of these components cost upwards of a hundred thousand dollars and can take 8 hours to install. This is where we come in. By commission, we take the manuals for a machine, and compile the anecdotal experiences of its operators and mechanics. We then produce a highly-interactive, true-to-life simulation of the machine, with animated schematics that show off exactly what's happening while it's running, in both normal and faulted states. With these tools, they can actually see how the "damn thing" works, top-to-bottom, inside-and-out. This helps them operate in a way that will avoid driving the machines to fail, and grok the machine well-enough to isolate root causes when it does fail. I could go on and on about this.. another time, perhaps. Alas, we don't have a blog about what we make. Perhaps I should start one.

klbarry 15y ago
Thank you for your detailed description, it was fascinating. Is your market under-served compared to consumer facing apps, and etc.?
- spiralganglion 15y ago
  Yes, but that doesn't give us much of an advantage. Most of the companies we sell to are monolithic organizations that are very set in their ways, despite knowing through-and-through that they have serious deficiencies in their workforce and that computer-based training simulations like ours are extremely effective. They cry to the heavens about their need for fundamentally better training, but it's hard to get them to adopt anything new or unfamiliar. I imagine it is in some ways similar to the experience of B2B venders working at the mega-enterprize level, except in our case we're dealing with organizations that are almost universally resistant to computers themselves, in addition to the usual bureaucracy. Fascinating market, really fundamentally different than the other markets I've worked in, both in terms of development and business constraints.
chadgeidel 15y ago
That sounds awesome. Seriously - I absolutely love what you are doing. Having a father and brother in construction (and having worked construction myself - although not at the scale you describe) I'm particularly sensitive to these kinds of issues.
9999 15y ago
You really should start a blog, I would read it.
aquark 15y ago
Sounds fascinating. Seems like there is an inefficiency in the system somewhere though -- if downtime is so expensive why are they not paying better trained people to be mechanics? At $10K\hour a skilled mechanic/engineer would only have to save an hour or two a month to justify having them sit around idle most of the time.
- spiralganglion 15y ago
  You could say the same thing about RIM, Nokia, or Microsoft. These companies are no doubt full of brilliant people, and they have the finances to hire more, but the ability of your workforce doesn't solve every problem. A lot of these industrial companies do have very bright engineers on staff, and they regularly hire consultants and analysts, and they have the money to pay companies like mine to create highly-specific simulations. I'm not sure where the balance is struck, or why they have the organization that they do, but they're suffering on many levels without the insight to address it. For my own professional development, I would like to better understand the motivations of these industrial mega-corps. I get the sense that they often don't understand themselves, and suffer from a sort of cultural poisoning. The "meta-game" of my business is figuring out how each of these companies think. Ultimately, we're hired to solve problems, and the software we make is but a tool to this end. You'd be surprised by how often we're commissioned for a tremendous project, with specific requests for software, which is completed to the great stated satisfaction of the client... only to discover that they haven't actually used what we've built. The mechanical failure of equipment and the hardship of repairs-people is a symptom. Training is a remedy, but sometimes it's for the wrong illness.

klbarry 15y ago

Thank you for your detailed description, it was fascinating. Is your market under-served compared to consumer facing apps, and etc.?

spiralganglion 15y ago
Yes, but that doesn't give us much of an advantage. Most of the companies we sell to are monolithic organizations that are very set in their ways, despite knowing through-and-through that they have serious deficiencies in their workforce and that computer-based training simulations like ours are extremely effective. They cry to the heavens about their need for fundamentally better training, but it's hard to get them to adopt anything new or unfamiliar. I imagine it is in some ways similar to the experience of B2B venders working at the mega-enterprize level, except in our case we're dealing with organizations that are almost universally resistant to computers themselves, in addition to the usual bureaucracy. Fascinating market, really fundamentally different than the other markets I've worked in, both in terms of development and business constraints.

chadgeidel 15y ago

That sounds awesome. Seriously - I absolutely love what you are doing. Having a father and brother in construction (and having worked construction myself - although not at the scale you describe) I'm particularly sensitive to these kinds of issues.

9999 15y ago

You really should start a blog, I would read it.

aquark 15y ago

Sounds fascinating. Seems like there is an inefficiency in the system somewhere though -- if downtime is so expensive why are they not paying better trained people to be mechanics? At $10K\hour a skilled mechanic/engineer would only have to save an hour or two a month to justify having them sit around idle most of the time.

spiralganglion 15y ago
You could say the same thing about RIM, Nokia, or Microsoft. These companies are no doubt full of brilliant people, and they have the finances to hire more, but the ability of your workforce doesn't solve every problem. A lot of these industrial companies do have very bright engineers on staff, and they regularly hire consultants and analysts, and they have the money to pay companies like mine to create highly-specific simulations. I'm not sure where the balance is struck, or why they have the organization that they do, but they're suffering on many levels without the insight to address it. For my own professional development, I would like to better understand the motivations of these industrial mega-corps. I get the sense that they often don't understand themselves, and suffer from a sort of cultural poisoning. The "meta-game" of my business is figuring out how each of these companies think. Ultimately, we're hired to solve problems, and the software we make is but a tool to this end. You'd be surprised by how often we're commissioned for a tremendous project, with specific requests for software, which is completed to the great stated satisfaction of the client... only to discover that they haven't actually used what we've built. The mechanical failure of equipment and the hardship of repairs-people is a symptom. Training is a remedy, but sometimes it's for the wrong illness.