The SMB Control Layer
Why small manufacturers need a unified operational layer — and why nobody has built one yet.
Every small manufacturer I know runs their business across a patchwork of disconnected systems. QuickBooks for accounting. A spreadsheet for scheduling. Maybe a legacy ERP that nobody fully understands. Email for customer communication. A whiteboard for the shop floor.
None of these systems talk to each other. The owner — or a key operator — becomes the integration layer, holding everything together in their head.
This works until it doesn’t. Growth stalls. Mistakes compound. Institutional knowledge walks out the door when someone retires.
The missing layer
What these businesses need isn’t another point solution. They need a control layer — a thin, intelligent system that sits above their existing tools and provides a unified view of operations. Not a rip-and-replace ERP. Not a $500K digital transformation. A layer that connects what’s already there and fills the gaps with targeted intelligence.
Why it hasn’t been built
Three reasons:
- The market is fragmented. A bindery, a machine shop, and a food manufacturer have very different workflows. Building a one-size-fits-all solution is nearly impossible.
- The buyers are skeptical. Small manufacturers have been burned by enterprise software promises before. They don’t trust vendors who haven’t stood on a shop floor.
- The economics are tough. Selling $50K software deals to $5M revenue companies requires a fundamentally different go-to-market than selling to enterprises.
What’s changing
AI changes the economics. A system that would have required 18 months of custom development can now be built in weeks. Not because AI writes perfect code — it doesn’t — but because it dramatically accelerates the work of experienced builders who understand the domain.
That’s what we’re building at Plyworks. Not a platform. A practice. Each engagement produces tools that work for that specific operation — and contributes components to a growing library that makes the next build faster.
The control layer isn’t a product. It’s a pattern. And we’re proving it one shop floor at a time.