Why we built Carbon and open-sourced it

After spending nearly a decade building end-to-end systems for manufacturing, I had a pretty good idea of what an "ideal" solution looked like from a technical perspective:

API-first, realtime subscriptions, forward/finite scheduling, and 1,000 little details to make the juice of using an ERP worth the squeeze.

But even as we work with our customers to become the best off-the-shelf ERP/MES for many types of discrete manufacturing, we are faced with the reality that there is no "perfect" off-the-shelf solution, because each manufacturing business is unique.

We open-sourced Carbon not because it's a great business plan, but because that's the system I would have wanted when I was in your shoes.

I believe open-source has incredible potential because it's not just a product–it's a community of like-minded people working to build the future of manufacturing in the age of AI and robotics.

We're glad you're here for it.

Brad Barbin

Co-Founder and CTO