After posting the first article, we got several responses that all had the same general question: “Why would you build a better mousetrap and then make it free? What’s the catch?” There are several reasons which are a blend of commercial and cultural drivers. Let’s address three of them here. If you still think it’s too good to be true, contact us directly here or schedule a demo here, and we’ll do what we can to demystify this further.
- For the most part, the Libre Core platform and the MPM application are free out of necessity. There is a disparity between the biggest manufacturers and those that seek to compete with them, but big companies must have competition for the price of goods to maintain some semblance of normalcy. The ability to be competitive is becoming increasingly tied to software and data and the incumbent software providers keep pushing their products further into to the realm of “luxury” purchases that only the biggest of the ‘Fortune X’ companies can afford. That must stop for competitive balance to be maintained.
- No manufacturing company, regardless of size or market position should have to gamble on an implementation of a continuous improvement product. Productivity losses kill companies and the only way to eliminate them is through continuous improvement. The big incumbent software providers essentially force small and mid-sized enterprises (SME) to gamble with their very existence to engage in continuous improvement. We make our data infrastructure free because it doesn’t make sense to risk putting our customers out of business. We’ll get paid by helping you execute your continuous improvement plan, not by watching you risk it all to create an operational baseline.
- Data infrastructure is fast becoming a commodity. You can’t do anything of value in continuous improvement without a single source of contextualized time series data that is available to all your applications. So, having a conversation about whether the core platform has “value,” doesn’t serve the end goal. We’d prefer to just get to the part where you make more money by eliminating losses and so we’ll just provide the software platform to facilitate massive change in your organization through structured continuous improvement – for free.
Ready for a change? Get started here.