Software built for manufacturers
We build custom software for manufacturers that reduces manual labor, catches errors, and surfaces what gets missed — running on top of the systems you already have.
Every manufacturing operation has decent systems — for production, for purchasing, for accounting, for quality. The gaps aren't inside any single system. They're in the handoffs between them, and in the work that happens around them that nobody designed a system for in the first place.
Someone spends six hours a week manually matching vendor invoices against POs. A buyer sends out fifty POs a day and has no way to know which ones came back acknowledged correctly. The owner can't get a straight answer on job profitability until two weeks after month-end. A retiring machinist takes thirty years of process knowledge with him.
These gaps are quiet, expensive, and almost universally ignored — not because they don't matter, but because no one has the time, and the systems designed to catch them weren't built for the specifics of your operation.
Right-sized solutions built on top of the systems you already run. No enterprise sales process, no six-month implementation, no recurring license fees that grow every time you hire someone.
The watchers.
Custom systems that monitor what your existing tools don't — vendor PO acknowledgments, invoice-to-PO matching, quote-to-PO verification, missed customer follow-ups, and the dozens of other places where things quietly go sideways. They run in the background, flag the exceptions, and surface them to the right person before they become expensive.
The repeatable work.
Document handling, folder management, ERP data entry, invoice processing, vendor onboarding, job close-outs. The kind of work that consumes hours a day across your office and adds zero leverage to the business. We automate the parts that can be automated and keep humans in the loop for the parts that shouldn't be.
Your data, turned into decisions.
Daily briefs on what changed overnight, trend analysis that catches problems before they hit the P&L, profitability monitoring at the job and customer level, and the KPIs that actually drive decisions. You start each morning knowing what needs attention.
The one-offs.
A quoting engine that gets quotes out the door faster, built around what you actually quote. A tribal-knowledge capture system for the retiring machinist. A custom integration between two systems that should have talked to each other from day one but don't. Specific problems, specific solutions.
Make AI actually useful.
Most manufacturers have been told to "use AI" and handed a chatbot that knows nothing about them. We set AI up around how your operation already works, load in your own knowledge so it actually knows your business, and connect it to the systems you already run — then build the custom pieces when off-the-shelf can't. How it works →
Every engagement starts with a paid scope and ends with working software I build, host, and keep running for you. No hourly meters running, no open-ended retainers, no per-seat license.
We start with a paid scoping engagement. You document the processes and gaps that are costing you the most, and measure the actual time and money at stake. We review, identify what's worth building and what isn't, and deliver a written scope with fixed pricing.
Fixed price, fixed scope. You see progress weekly. No hourly billing, no surprise invoices.
I host and run it for you on managed infrastructure that works on top of the systems you already run, so nothing moves to a new platform. I coordinate with your IT team or provider for any access needed, install everything, train your people, and handle the technical pieces you don't want to think about.
Every build includes a 12-month care plan covering hosting, monitoring, bug fixes, and small adjustments across the whole system. After the first year, you choose between continued full-service maintenance or a lower-cost pay-as-you-go option that keeps your automation running but lets you handle issues as they come up.
Linked Operations is a small practice founded by someone who spent his career in manufacturing, including a decade running a machine shop. The work here comes directly from that experience — these are the systems we wished we'd had, built for the operations that need them now.
We work with a deliberate number of manufacturers at a time, focused on solving real operational gaps with practical, right-sized tools. No enterprise sales process, no six-month implementation, no platforms you have to bend your business around.
If you've got a process eating hours every week, data that should be telling you more than it is, or a sneaking suspicion that things are falling through the cracks somewhere expensive — send a note. First call's free — about 30 minutes, a straight conversation about how your operation runs and where it's leaking, not a demo. If there's something worth building, I'll say so; if there isn't, I'll say that too.