Ask HN: Product Knowledge Systems
1 comments
I worked in hardware a few years ago at a small shop and I'm just chiming in with a basic reply. I hope people with experience at larger scale could elaborate further.
I believe what you are looking for is a product lifecycle management (PLM) software.
I'm not certain at which scale it makes sense, but the team was looking at Teamcenter from Siemens at the time: https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/global/en/products/te...
It seems expensive but very complete.
We shipped around 500-1000 units per year and as the devices were sensors/actuators connected to the internet which we continuously supported, we kept device information in a RDBMS on our backend. We registered them via NFC after they left the factory and configured them afterwards on installation.
If you're looking more for post-sales servicing, depending on the team's skill set and device service volume, I reckon you could wrangle all this in Excel/Airtable.
I believe what you are looking for is a product lifecycle management (PLM) software.
I'm not certain at which scale it makes sense, but the team was looking at Teamcenter from Siemens at the time: https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/global/en/products/te...
It seems expensive but very complete.
We shipped around 500-1000 units per year and as the devices were sensors/actuators connected to the internet which we continuously supported, we kept device information in a RDBMS on our backend. We registered them via NFC after they left the factory and configured them afterwards on installation.
If you're looking more for post-sales servicing, depending on the team's skill set and device service volume, I reckon you could wrangle all this in Excel/Airtable.
curious what those manufacturing physical products use for tracking individual units, their hardware, and history.
In this case, suppose a SMB manufactures a sensor unit for industrial use. Volume 100..1000 units per year. Units consists of a few hardware and software components.
What sw or system can be used to track those units and what happens to them? Eg, unit X consists of components A, B, C, firmware version D. Shipped to customer Y, shipped back for repairs at date E, replaced component B with F that has firmware version G. Etc, such things.
I don't know what I don't know and greatly appreciate any pointers!
What are such systems called? What options are there? What are most suitable when volumes are small, up to 1k, and what when larger, perhaps 1Mn? What are the criterias when one should consider migrating from system A to system B, perhaps at a certain complexity?
Thanks!