--- title: "The ERP says it is finished. The floor knows it is not." url: "https://mescator.com" description: "MESCATOR is a sovereign, AI-native operating system for European manufacturers: works orders, machine data, traceability and realistic promise dates in one place." --- Pre-launch · open source # The ERP says it is finished. **The floor knows it is not.** MESCATOR closes the gap between what the system believes and what is actually happening on the line. Works orders that carry plan and actual, machine signals read where they already exist, traceability you can act on, and promise dates built from real throughput. On your own infrastructure, and never in the control path. [Join the waitlist](https://mescator.com/contact)[Read the blog](https://mescator.com/blog) - Reads the floor, never controls it - Runs offline, on your premises - Open source, your data The problem ## Three gaps every plant has and no module fixes None of them is a lack of software. All of them are distance between where something is known and where it is needed. ### Two versions of the truth The system says the works order is complete. The line leader knows two units are on the rework bench and one is waiting on a part. Both records are maintained honestly, they disagree, and the disagreement is only reconciled at month end. ### The machines have been talking for years Cycle counts, states, stoppages and alarms already exist in the controllers and the SCADA. Almost none of it reaches a commercial decision, so the plant is instrumented for engineering and blind for planning. ### Traceability that passes an audit but not a recall You can produce the records an auditor asks for. Answering which finished units contain material from that batch, before the customer calls again, is a different question — and in most plants it takes days of paper. How it works ## Read the floor, hold one truth, prepare the action The order of these three matters more than any of them individually. 1. 01 ### Read the floor Machine signals where they exist, scans where they are practical, operator input where they are not, and photographs of paper travellers where that is still how it works. Nothing requires ripping out equipment that is running fine. 2. 02 ### Hold one truth The works order carries the plan, the actual, the materials consumed, the quality events and the genealogy — as one object. When the plan and reality diverge, they diverge visibly and on the day rather than in a variance report. 3. 03 ### Prepare the action Reschedule, reorder, hold a batch, quote a realistic date. Drafted with the reasoning shown, and confirmed by a planner. The system never writes to a machine and never decides on its own. What it does ## Six things a plant needs before it needs anything clever Built for manufacturers between about twenty and five hundred people, where there is a real floor and no team of integrators. ### Works orders with plan and actual One object per order carrying what was meant to happen, what did, and the difference — visible while the order is still open rather than after it closes. ### Machine data, from what you already run Standard industrial protocols where the equipment supports them, existing MES and SCADA where they exist, and a barcode or a tablet where they do not. Read-only, always. ### Genealogy you can query Batch to unit to shipment and back again, answerable in minutes. The version that matters is not the report you file, it is the question you can answer under pressure. ### Quality on the order, not in a binder Nonconformances, holds, rework and deviations recorded against the order they belong to, so the cost of quality attaches to the job that caused it. ### Promise dates from real throughput Dates calculated from what this line actually achieves, including changeovers and the stoppages nobody logs. A date from standard times is a guess with a decimal point on it. ### Product records the regulation will want Product-level data captured in a structured form as it is made rather than reconstructed later. European product rules are moving toward per-item data, and reconstruction after the fact is the expensive way to do it. ## Never in the control path This is a design boundary rather than a stage of maturity. MESCATOR reads from machines and writes to none of them. Anything that can actuate equipment sits inside a safety case, under machinery and functional-safety regimes, with assessment and documentation that a business system has no business claiming. The moment software like this can move an axis, it becomes a different product with different obligations. - **Read-only from equipment.** Signals in, nothing out. No setpoints, no commands, no writes to a controller. - **Not a safety system.** Interlocks, guarding and emergency stop stay entirely where they are, in systems certified for it. - **Not a machine controller.** Cycle logic belongs to the equipment and its supplier, not to a system that gets updated on a Thursday. - **Actions are drafts.** Rescheduling, holds and reorders are prepared for a person, because the person is the one who can see the floor. ## Sovereignty means the line does not stop In an office, a cloud outage is an inconvenient morning. On a line it is production. That makes the argument for owning your systems more concrete in manufacturing than anywhere else — not a matter of principle but of whether the shift can continue when a connection, a subscription or a supplier decision goes against you. - **Local first.** Runs on your premises and keeps running with no connection to anything outside the building. - **Your data, your database.** Production history is the most valuable record a plant has and the least portable in most systems. - **No licence that can stop a shift.** Open source, so a commercial decision made elsewhere cannot halt your line. - **Replaceable supplier.** The code is public and somebody else could maintain it, including when the supplier being replaced is us. Where we are ## Not running in anybody's plant yet Manufacturing software that has not survived a real shift should say so before it says anything else. 1. Now ### A reference line, our own risk Works orders, machine reads and traceability running against real production, where the failure modes we find cost us rather than a customer. 2. Next ### The first plants A small number of manufacturers, set up with help and watched through a full month including a bad week. Bad weeks are where this kind of software is actually judged. 3. Later ### Reporting and product data Structured product records and the reporting obligations attached to them. They come after the core is proven, and each will be described with exactly what is supported and what is not. FAQ ## Frequently asked questions What is MESCATOR in one sentence? An open-source operating system for a manufacturing company that reads what is happening on the floor, keeps one truthful version of every works order, and prepares the decisions a planner would otherwise make from a spreadsheet. Does it replace our ERP? No. The ERP keeps the commercial and financial record. MESCATOR is the layer between it and the floor, which is precisely the layer most plants fill with spreadsheets and a whiteboard. Does it replace an MES? For plants that do not have one, it does much of what they would buy an MES for. For a regulated plant running a validated MES, it does not, and we will not claim it does — validation is expensive for reasons that are legitimate. Does it control machines? No, and it never will. It reads. Anything that writes to equipment falls under machinery and functional-safety obligations, and a system built for planning should not be inside that boundary. What happens when the internet goes down? The line keeps running and so does the system, because it runs on your premises. That is the practical meaning of sovereignty in a factory and the reason it matters more here than in an office. Which machines can it read? Equipment supporting standard industrial protocols, existing MES and SCADA where they are present, and manual or barcode entry where they are not. An honest assessment of your specific equipment is part of the first engagement rather than a claim made in advance. What about the digital product passport and product regulations? European product rules are moving toward structured, per-item data, arriving by product group over time. What MESCATOR does now is capture that data as production happens, which is the cheap moment to do it. It is not a compliance certification and will not be described as one. What will it cost? The software is open source, so self-hosting costs infrastructure and your time. A managed option will be priced per site rather than per user, because charging a plant for adding a shift supervisor is the model this is arguing against. ## Tell us what your floor actually looks like The waitlist form goes live soon. Until then the blog explains what is being built and, more usefully, what is deliberately outside the boundary. [Contact](https://mescator.com/contact)[Read the blog](https://mescator.com/blog) No form yet, no data collected — just come back.