Custom Ops Software for Manufacturing
Your production schedule is in Excel. And so is yesterday's.
The plan lives in one sheet, the floor reports against another, and the shift supervisor reconciles them at the end of the day. That is not a process. That is the Spreadsheet Tax, and it shows up in every late order and every disputed inventory count.
The 30-Day Pilot Build. Three working modules, live in 30 days. Fixed price. Founder led.
The Spreadsheet Tax
Quiet. Unpriced. Paid every shift in reconciliation hours, mis-shipped orders, and inventory counts no one trusts.
What the Pilot replaces
Three of your highest friction shop floor workflows, rebuilt as custom software your team already knows how to use.
What the Tax Looks Like
It does not show up in the P&L line.
It shows up in the orders that ship late, the quality holds that surface too far downstream, and the slow realisation that the operation runs on a stack of spreadsheets one person quietly maintains.
Production schedules that never match the floor
The plan is in Excel. Reality is on the line. Reconciliation happens at the end of the shift, after the orders have already shipped wrong.
Quality data trapped in a separate system
QA logs in one app, production data in another, the supervisor pulls them into a spreadsheet on Monday morning. The defect pattern is visible too late to fix.
Inventory counts that drift
Bin counts on paper, system counts in the ERP, cycle counts in a fourth place. The number you trust is the one a person walked the floor to find.
The shift supervisor is the integration layer
When they take a holiday, the production manager is reading three screens to answer one question. The firm calls it experience. The market calls it key-person risk.
The 30-Day Pilot Build
Three workflows. 30 days. Fixed price.
The Pilot is a real delivery, not a diagnostic. We pick the three workflow modules that are costing the most output, scope them tightly, and ship working software in 30 days.
01
Fit call
A 20 minute conversation to walk through the production workflow that is breaking. We confirm whether the Pilot shape is the right starting point.
02
Written quote, three modules
We send a written quote listing the three workflow modules we will build in 30 days. Fixed price. No scope drift.
03
Build and deliver
Fifty percent on kickoff. Twenty-eight days of focused build. Fourteen days of live use. Fifty percent on delivery.
Dual Guarantee
Two-sided risk reversal.
Delivery
Miss the 30 day mark for reasons on our side, we continue at no extra charge and give you twenty-five percent off any follow on engagement.
Fitness for purpose
After fourteen days of live use, if the build is not solving the scoped problem, fifty percent refund. You keep the code, the deployment, and the documentation.
Fit Check
Is this the right shape for your plant?
Straight signal on where the Pilot fits and where it does not. The 20 minute fit call is the next step either way.
If this is you, the Pilot is the right starting point.
- Mid-market discrete manufacturers running shop floor on spreadsheets and paper
- Food, beverage, or specialty assembly teams where quality data is disconnected from production
- Operators who want a working module in weeks, not a six-month MES procurement
If this is you, we will say so on the call.
- Full ERP or MES replacement programmes
- High-volume continuous-process plants with sub-second control loops
- Multi-site rollouts with hundreds of concurrent operators on day one
FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
Will this replace our ERP or sit alongside it?
It sits alongside. We are not in the ERP replacement business. The Pilot targets the operational gaps your ERP does not cover: the shop floor logs, the quality data, the inventory counts that get reconciled in Excel because the ERP module was too rigid to use.
We already have an MES. Why do we need this?
If your MES does the job, you do not. We see Pilots get traction where the MES covers part of the workflow and the rest spills into spreadsheets, paper, and WhatsApp. The Pilot replaces the spillover, not the MES.
What about disruption during peak production?
We plan around your production calendar. Critical cutover phases are scheduled outside peak weeks. We build incrementally so there is never a big-bang go-live that risks output.
How do you handle ISO, FDA, or other compliance?
Compliance is built in, not bolted on. We design validation rules, audit trails, and reporting structures that meet the standards your QA team works to. Your compliance team owns the requirements. We engineer the system that enforces them.
We have tried shop-floor apps before and the team did not use them. What is different?
Off-the-shelf tools fail because they make your team adapt to the tool. We do the opposite. We watch how your supervisors, operators, and dispatchers actually work, then build software that fits into that without retraining anyone. Adoption is built in.
How quickly can we see impact?
If the right starting point is three high-friction workflows, the 30-Day Pilot Build ships them in 30 days. A broader build, replacing more of the spreadsheet stack, takes longer and gets scoped after the Pilot ships.
What happens after the engagement?
You own the code, the deployment, and the documentation. If you want ongoing care, BuildX Assurance is our monthly care plan for security patches, dependency updates, and monitoring. You are never locked in.
Stop paying the Spreadsheet Tax.
Book a 20 minute fit call. We walk through the workflow that is costing the most output, confirm it is a fit, and send a written quote with the three modules listed.