Short write‑ups of problems we hit running a real commerce operation and what we changed in the code because of them. No product announcements; just the reasoning.
The factory still runs on paper: a tally per worker per task, totted up on Friday. The manufacture module that replaces it is built, tested, imported from the old system locally, and not yet on the floor. Part I is the model — artefacts, recipes as ordered tasks with raw materials per step, job orders that expand into a work queue, and a "task session" that is the single payable fact, with the pay rate frozen at the moment it closes — and the decision to make every product a trade unit first so a candle made on Tuesday can be sold online on Wednesday.
Four sales hubs in Europe buy most of their stock from suppliers in Asia through agents — commission‑based intermediaries who consolidate everyone's purchase orders, pay deposits, and ship one container. The procurement module that models that is built and being migrated, not yet live. Part I is the design: suppliers as group master data, the agent's "mini kingdom", a purchase order that splits per supplier, a stock delivery that is a delivery note in reverse, a cross‑organisation shopping list with MOQ bars, deposits as "money in the air", and a command‑and‑control board built for the fights.
Coming soon in the manufacture module — a production reward scheme that pays people by the hour at a band earned by their pace, never below the legal wage, with targets derived so that faster work costs the business the same per unit. Why we did not build piecework, how the spreadsheet became rows with dates, and the live ladder on the shop‑floor screen.