Manufacturing ERP

What it does

Carbon is an open-source ERP, MRP, MES and QMS system designed for manufacturing operations. It handles bill of materials, work travelers, serial genealogy, production scheduling and quality management. The platform runs on Postgres and can be deployed in multiple ways: in a customer's own cloud account (BYOC), on-premises, or in air-gapped networks without internet access.

Who it is for

The product targets manufacturers who need to keep production data in their own infrastructure. It appeals to companies handling controlled unclassified information (CUI) subject to CMMC or NIST 800-171 compliance requirements. The site mentions hard tech companies and innovative manufacturers as typical users. Organizations with single or multiple facilities and sites can run the system on a single ledger.

Pricing

The site shows a "View Self-Hosted Pricing" link but does not display actual prices publicly. Customers can contact sales or start free.

How it stands out

Carbon emphasizes data sovereignty. Customers control the application deployment, database, encryption keys, identity provider, backup policy and retention rules. The platform is open-source under AGPL-3.0, allowing code inspection and customization before deployment. Single-tenant architecture means each deployment has its own application, database and object storage, with no data copied into Carbon's managed infrastructure. The BYOC model lets enterprises maintain their own cloud accounts while Carbon handles releases, certificates and monitoring. For regulated manufacturers, the system supports compliance documentation including SSP, POA&M and SPRS score inputs.

What a founder should check

First, understand the competitive landscape of open-source manufacturing ERP systems and proprietary incumbents like SAP, Oracle NetSuite and Infor. Assess whether customers actually value the self-hosted, data-sovereign model enough to justify migration effort and support complexity, or if cloud-based SaaS has already won the market.

Second, evaluate switching costs. Once manufacturers embed Carbon into their operations, migrate legacy data and train teams, how sticky is the relationship? The product mentions white-glove deployment and migration support, suggesting significant implementation effort that could create lock-in.

Third, examine the moat around compliance and security. CMMC and NIST certifications are valuable differentiators for defense contractors, but they require ongoing investment to maintain. Verify how difficult it is for competitors to build equivalent compliance capabilities and whether the open-source model creates or weakens defensibility against commercial rivals.