Your Shop Floor Runs Blind Because Your MES Can't Talk to Your ERP

A single-line OEE dashboard with MQTT ingestion and Supabase backend starts around $40K. Multi-plant systems with ERP integration, quality portals, and kiosk UIs land between $100K and $200K. We scope fixed-price after the Week 1 audit so you won't get a surprise change order. The biggest cost variable is the number of ERP and PLC integrations -- each connector adds roughly $8K-$15K depending on API documentation quality.

Most teams see a working staging dashboard by Week 5. Production rollout for a single facility typically wraps by Week 8-10. Multi-plant deployments stagger after that -- usually 2-3 weeks per additional site once the core platform is stable. We don't do 6-month waterfall timelines. You'll see working software every two weeks.

Traditional MES platforms charge per-seat licenses, lock you into proprietary databases, and take 6-12 months to customize. Next.js gives you server-rendered dashboards that load in under a second on a $200 kiosk tablet. Supabase gives you a full Postgres database with real-time subscriptions, row-level security, and zero per-seat fees. You own the code, you own the data, and you can hire any React developer to maintain it. We've replaced $80K/year SaaS contracts with this stack.

Yes. We work with Modbus TCP, OPC-UA, and MQTT-native devices. For older PLCs that only speak Modbus or proprietary protocols, we deploy an edge gateway (typically a Raspberry Pi or Advantech box running Node-RED or Ignition Edge) that translates to MQTT. Your existing SCADA stays untouched -- we read from it, we don't replace it unless you want us to.

The kiosk UI is built offline-first with service workers and IndexedDB caching. Operators can keep logging defects and scanning work orders. When connectivity returns, queued records sync to Supabase automatically. On the telemetry side, the MQTT broker and edge gateway buffer messages locally until the upstream connection recovers. We've tested this with 4-hour outage simulations -- zero data loss.

A standard engagement runs with a 3-4 person squad: one senior full-stack engineer (Next.js + Supabase), one IoT/integration engineer handling MQTT and PLC connectivity, one UI engineer for kiosk and dashboard work, and a project lead who's done manufacturing installs before. For multi-plant builds we'll scale to 5-6. Everyone's W-2 or long-term contract -- no random freelancer rotation.

We offer monthly retainers starting at $3K/month that cover Vercel and Supabase infrastructure monitoring, MQTT broker health checks, dependency updates, and up to 20 hours of feature work. Most manufacturing clients stay on retainer for at least the first year because production requirements shift with new product lines. You'll get a dedicated Slack channel and a 4-hour response SLA during business hours.

Supabase row-level security policies enforce plant-level and role-level access out of the box. All data is encrypted at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.3). We support SSO via SAML or OIDC for enterprise IT requirements. For regulated industries, we've built to FDA 21 CFR Part 11 requirements including electronic signatures and full audit trails stored in Postgres. You'll get a security architecture doc as part of the Week 2-3 deliverable.