Why Was Bold Factory Born?

Industry 4.0, IoT, digital twin, blockchain… Over the last ten years, there has been a constant barrage of these terms, and it would seem that Spanish industry has taken a giant leap forward in digitalization. But if you take a closer look at the reality of industrial SMEs, you will see that Excel and paper are still the order of the day.

In my opinion, there is a major disconnect between reality and the promises of a technological revolution. In many cases, I feel that we are still in the early stages of Industry 3.0, focused on computerization and automation. And that’s okay, but we need to stop covering up the embarrassing truth.

If, despite this, we have companies that are competitive both nationally and internationally, that’s not a problem—it’s a great opportunity. Imagine the leap we could make if we really adopted these promised technologies, and the boost in productivity they could give us…

I think any business owner or manager would agree that optimizing operations in an industrial company is not easy. Coordinating supplier purchasing (with its usual delays and stockouts), planning and carrying out production so that everything runs like clockwork, with no quality problems, is a Herculean task, if not impossible to accomplish without the right help.

This is certainly nothing new. Since the 90s, with the emergence of the first ERPs, we have been trying to solve this, but we still haven’t found the right answer. There are a great many ERPs on the market: some delve deeper into the world of manufacturing, while others do so less; some focus on a single sector, while others are more general-purpose. At the top of the general-purpose category are giants like SAP, NetSuite, or Microsoft Dynamics.

The problem is that ERPs start with the financial side (which is very similar across all companies) and expand from there into operations, starting with the warehouse (quite successfully), planning, maintenance, and only occasionally getting into the core of an industrial company: manufacturing.

Why? Obviously, because it’s complicated, and because it is the element that varies most between companies in different sectors, making it harder to create a functional abstraction that works for them all.

But then the 2000s arrived, and what we know as MES (Manufacturing Execution System) began to appear. These do put manufacturing at the center, but they emerged as a communication layer between an ERP and a SCADA system or similar: they are an add-on, and one that also ignores the other departments.

As a result, they have evolved toward managing automation, and take automation for granted. Add to that a design that already looks outdated today, along with pricing models that are prohibitive for small businesses, and you have a recipe for disaster.

This is precisely the gap Bold Factory aims to fill: a solution focused on offering a user experience worthy of the 21st century, without requiring large initial investments, and with total flexibility to adapt to each company’s level of automation—or lack thereof.

The ambition is not just to create a traditional MES, but to combine it with warehouse management, production planning, purchasing, maintenance management… In other words, to comprehensively meet the operational needs of an industrial SME.

If all this sounds familiar and you’re interested in finding out how Bold Factory can transform your company’s operations, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Be brave, be Bold.