How we built a factory management tool to help small manufacturers ditch Excel and WhatsApp
Hey Indie Hackers,
After working with a few small-to-medium manufacturers, we noticed something wild:
Most of them still manage production and inventory using Excel sheets, WhatsApp messages, or whiteboards 😳
That’s why we built iProduction — a self-hosted, one-time-payment software that helps factories:
Manage raw materials
Track production stages
Maintain stock levels
Handle customer orders
Generate production and inventory reports
We designed it to be easy for non-technical factory staff to use, and there’s no subscription — just a single payment and done.
🔍 Live demo included
💻 PHP + MySQL-based
📦 Full source code + documentation
Our goal was to help local manufacturers get digital without needing a huge ERP system or monthly SaaS fees.
If you’ve worked with factories or industrial businesses, I would love to hear about how they manage their operations and whether this kind of tool would be helpful to them.
Hoping it works well for you. Nice initiative
Great initiative! At Accio AI, we work with manufacturers' procurement teams and see this pain point daily. Love the one-time-payment model - it's perfect for budget-conscious factories.
One thought: Have you considered adding simple barcode scanning? We've found it dramatically reduces inventory errors for non-tech staff.
Wishing you success in digitizing small manufacturers!
This is such a relevant problem, and I’ve seen it firsthand. A family friend runs a small manufacturing shop and still juggles between Excel, voice notes, and printed order forms. Your solution sounds like a huge step up without the SaaS complexity.
Curious, how did you decide on making it self-hosted and one-time payment vs cloud-based SaaS? Was that based on feedback from factory owners, or more of a strategic call?
Also, love that it’s PHP/MySQL, feels like a practical choice for local IT teams to manage.
It would be interesting to learn more about this, it can be a good tool to simplify work.
Hi I would love to hear more about this
Please visit the website to learn more about this and check out the demo.