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.

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.

"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

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/ [2] https://goo.gl/maps/amxpekwPEGr

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 [2] https://triz-journal.com/triz-what-is-triz/

"Figure out software after everything else" I also work at a manufacturing startup (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.

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?

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).

Putting aside for a moment the author's experience, our own experience at 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.

"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 :)

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.

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

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".

having been through a number of tech businesses who do manufacturing... ( https://www.taitradio.com http://www.compacsort.com and now 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".

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

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.

Does anyone else get turned off by the needless vulgarity?

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

Any need for the F word?

>> "...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.

Google Streetview sometimes shows photos that are a year or more out of date, FYI.

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?

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?

I don't know if I agree. Software is a pain to write well, especially for a process that's not yet understood.

A simple example from my personal life is writing down exercises I do at the gym. I was surprised by how many different type of exercises there are. At first it was just "lat pull down, 80 pounds, 3 sets, 10 reps". Then I tracked different manufacturers, to stay on top of machine differences. Then I started tracking number of attempted reps, along with reps at lower weight. Then I made a note for weights per arm, for machines with independent weights on each side. Then I took into account the base weight for the bar. I could add features forever.

To manage the complexity, I started looking at software to help. I decided to scrap the idea of building software in favor of writing exercises on a sticky note I stuck to my wallet, and later migrating the data to a "good enough" spreadsheet.

Software is meant to serve us. If you let it take over, it will. Manufacturing benefits from software in places, but sometimes a pen, sticky, and spreadsheet is all you really need, and if you outgrow it, you'll understand exactly how software can help.

My uncle and 101 year old grandfather make machine parts in a shop with a bunch of old school analog stuff. They have a computer for a milling machine. It all works great.

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/

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-anythin...

How many companies hired temps to fill out forms for these types of tasks? Plenty I'm sure!

In general, it's hard for me to agree with that too. I can remember a few times where the hardware side of things was done decently (or at least at a level I could put up with) but the software side was shit and felt like a necessary evil, an afterthought, a forgotten checkmark on a todo list that needed to be taken care of.

Belkin WeMo comes to my mind as a prime example as their app is slow and buggy. Philips Hue lightbulbs I've bought my for parents last christmas can be another one - lightbulbs themselves look and work nice but the software is (imho of course) buggy, unintuitive and incomprehensible.

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.

Well, you are arguing for being as much as a software company as possible, by choosing the right problems will minimize risk. I don't think anybody disagrees.

But once you've decided you must customize some hardware (or even distribute it), the article is claiming that the software is the last thing on your entire solution that you should work on. You should get everything else right first.

I don't think those contradict each other.