When you spend any part of your career in manufacturing, it can wear you down. It’s a constant struggle to track too many projects, too many tasks, put out too many fires, and enforce quality in a world where the where the workers make $8/hr and often don’t speak much English. When you finally dial in a product or process, the next product comes out, new processes are introduced, and the cycle starts all over again.

The facilities are typically in some boring business park, the offices aren’t cushy, and there is no glory to be found. When an actor plays the role of “businessman” they work in Advertising, not Manufacturing.

But with all the apparent negatives, manufacturing gets into your blood. It has a rhythmic cycle that beats like a heart. I draws you back in. I can’t look at any task without thinking of it as a process subject to improvement.

So when I decided to get out of the world of manufacturing and start my own software company, I inevitably started a company with products targeted toward manufacturing. But they’re not limited to manufacturing. It’s all about documenting and improving processes, really.

In the Flow is the official blog of BreezeTree Software, and I am Nicholas Hebb, founder of the company. In person, I go by just Nick. I like to write about BreezeTree Software’s products, anything process-centric, and the business of running a small software company.