Jua Kali

Software written for the workshop that exists, not the one in the brochure.

Kenya's small manufacturers employ most of the country's industrial workforce. Almost none of them use production software, and the reason is not that they do not care about efficiency. It is that the software assumes conditions they do not have.

Assumptions we dropped

Four things most systems take for granted.

Everyone has a smartphone with data

Most of the floor has a feature phone and a tight airtime budget. So the worker surface is USSD. It runs on the signalling channel, needs no data bundle, no install and no updates. The oldest handset in the workshop can use it.

People will learn a new interface

They will learn a menu with seven options and nothing else. Every branch is under thirty seconds and four keypresses. Nobody trains anybody. A supervisor shows a welder once and it sticks.

The internet is always up

Power and connectivity both cut out, sometimes for hours. USSD works whenever the mobile network works, which is far more of the time than broadband. The dashboard is the only piece that needs a proper connection.

The office is the source of truth

The floor knows first, and the office finds out later. So reporting starts where the work happens: stock, production and faults are entered by the person who saw them, at the moment they saw them.

A Tuesday in Kamukunji

The value is not in having records. It is in the gap between something going wrong and somebody who can fix it finding out.

09:12

On paper: The grinder starts smoking. Peter switches to another bench and mentions it at lunch.

On Bacaan: Peter dials in, four keypresses. The machine is marked down, a ticket opens, the managers get a text.

09:40

On paper: Nothing happens, because nobody upstream knows yet.

On Bacaan: The office reassigns the two runs that depended on it before the morning is lost.

11:30

On paper: The last aluminium sheet goes into a gate. Nobody notices.

On Bacaan: Stock hits zero on the issue, an alert fires, a draft purchase order is waiting for approval.

16:00

On paper: The afternoon run stops. The steel yard has closed.

On Bacaan: The steel arrived at two, because the order went out at half eleven.

Try it with your own numbers

Set up a plant, add three workers and a handful of materials, and see whether the Pulse tells you anything you did not already suspect. Sign in to your plant, or read how it works.