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> This application was responsible for practically everything that ran the factory: inventory, supply chain management, cost analysis, etc.

They could have bought something off the shelf. Not sure what was the value in building everything from scratch

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What like SAP? And then spend 10s of millions in customizing it for their needs and dealing with an arcane, unintuitive interface? I've seen this over and over again.

I understand SAP's business model: common core business logic code that helps your legal compliance, then lightly customized at great expense.

What I don't understand is why the UI sucks so very, very much every single time. And why it's so very, very slow. It seems like it has to be on purpose. Can anyone with insight explain it to me?

Different priorities. The goal isn't to make beautiful software. The goal is a system flexible enough to meet the users needs.

I also think it is a cultural. See SAP's blog entry "Why users might think their SAP user interface is crumby" https://blogs.sap.com/2015/09/15/why-users-might-think-their...

Also see: JIRA

Maybe all of the contractual obligations for existing products were not a good idea

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