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Comment by AbrahamParangi | Hacker News Reader

"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.

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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.

You're talking about consumer-facing software though. There's no app for "lettuce".

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.

Perhaps the commenter meant the software that runs on the product (if it's a product that runs software)?

If that is the case, I find it hard to disagree with the comment then.

Figuring out the process is a complex task. A complex task that (imo) is very likely to be solved better by some sort of AI approach than human tinkering. That's where I see software innovation in production. Having an efficient lab/simulation toolkit where you can constantly improve your processes (probably a human/computer hybrid).

> A complex task that (imo) is very likely to be solved better by some sort of AI approach than human tinkering.

Citation extremely needed.

Automated Taylorism is going to be the bane of our lives. The non-AI version of "gamification" and endless metrics is bad enough.

I'm not sure that the actual manufacturing processes are that amenable to the application of AI as they are typically dictated by the actual physical work being done. However, scheduling and, in some environments, pricing in ERP systems can benefit from more advanced techniques though not sure that the ones I have seen would qualify as "AI".

Saying that NAV is 30 years old is like saying Unix is almost 50 years old - while true in one sense it is missing the fact that these systems have been in constant development since then.

I find it's easier to improve your process when it's in software form than not. Software development should absolutely be an iterative process, but prototyping in software and then continuously improving works a lot better than trying to design in non-software, IME.

> I disagree with you - Figure out your process and automate with software.

When I read this an instant thought was the software you develop is also a constraint on your process. Really easy to paint yourself into a corner.

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.

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