Ever tried a fancy software on the shop floor—only to realize it’s nothing like the sales pitch?
If you work in manufacturing IT/OT, you’ve probably seen this happen firsthand. A system looks polished in demos, loaded with checkboxes that make management happy—but the moment it reaches the shop floor, it’s clunky, frustrating, and barely usable in real production.
A couple of months ago, we already wrote an article about "Why Most Manufacturing Software Sucks — and What We Do Differently at UMH". In this video, we focus on the first part of the article and break down two major reasons why most manufacturing software fails the people who actually use it—and why this keeps happening over and over again.
Part 1: The Two Core Problems
- It’s Designed to Be Bought, Not Used
- The priority is to impress buyers, not to serve operators and engineers.
- Real users get stuck with slow, convoluted UIs and missing basic functions (like copy-pasting tag names).
- It’s Not Built for Power Users
- Many platforms claim to be “no-code” or “low-code,” but in reality, they break down at scale.
- Example: Node-RED is great for small proof-of-concepts, but once you manage 200+ machines, it turns into an unmanageable mess of flows, workarounds, and external integrators hacking fixes.
Part 2: We Built UMH to Break the Cycle
In Part 2, we show you how we built UMH differently: by going open source, anchoring everything in IT/OT best practices, and focusing on one exceptional product instead of spreading ourselves thin.
1) Open Source: We’re Forced to Put Users First
In most software, you're locked in after buying a license—bugs linger, features get delayed, and vendors prioritize sales over usability.
We took a different route: UMH is open source. Our core platform is free, which means we can't survive unless we build something that truly works for shop-floor users.
Why It Matters:
- Users can test, modify, or even walk away—no forced lock-in.
- Real-world improvements come from the community: users have added support for Beckhoff devices and even fixed bugs in SensorConnect.
- Our business depends on you seeing value—not on upselling services or hiding key features.
2) IT/OT Best Practices for Real-World Scale
Most platforms claim to support modern architectures but crumble when applied to real factory environments. So we went straight to the source: battle-tested IT/OT best practices like Kubernetes, Helm, and single YAML configs.
What This Means for You:
- One YAML file defines the entire deployment—easy to replicate across hundreds of devices.
- Git-based configuration ensures changes are transparent, reversible, and secure.
- Remote management lets you tweak settings without onsite visits.
What’s Next? ⏭️
In Part 3, we unveil our product vision: Why we focus on the Unified Namespace and how that decision impacts everything—from protocol converters to future UI improvements.
👉 If you’re tired of frustrating softwares, try our free Community Edition and see the difference yourself.
