Last night I had an idea.

That happens more often, and usually the sensible thing is to just take the dogs for a walk. This time I didn’t.

I wanted to make something for the relatively small business owner. Not yet another enormous ERP system where you first need a course just to create an item. Just something that tells you what you have, what you need, what you have to make and what you can deliver.

So I started with an item.

An aluminium tube, I think.

Then came a lamp module. And a base. A bill of materials. Of course, it turned out that the lamp module itself was made up of components too.

Before you know it, you have semi-finished products.

Then came stock. Because it’s nice to know what something consists of, but you also want to know whether you have it. And where it is.

Then came a sales order.

For Hajo.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have done that, because Hajo immediately ordered ten HENDRIKs.

By then, HENDRIK had come into existence too. An outdoor light for beside the front door. €695. Sleek thing, if I say so myself. With exactly one blue detail, because even a Flemish jay can show restraint.

And then, of course, I wanted to know whether we could actually make those ten HENDRIKs.

So along came material requirements.

And somewhere between an aluminium tube and ten outdoor lights, it began to look suspiciously like a real system.

GWOD.

No idea exactly where it ends. I do know what it’s for.

For the furniture maker who wants to make tables and cabinets and doesn’t want to spend the evening doing admin. For the small manufacturing business where Excel, scraps of paper and the owner’s own head worked perfectly well for years, until things became just a little too complicated.

Multi-user. Expandable. Affordable.

Not less capable, just less fuss in doing what needs to be done.

For the demo, we’ve even invented a complete fictional company.

That company is called LAMP.

LAMP makes lamps.

We’ve already thought about the helpdesk too:

“Is it plugged in?”
“Yes.”
“Switch on?”
“Yes.”
“Light?”
“No.”
“Then it’s broken.”

Done.

Maybe that, ultimately, is the idea behind GWOD too. Behind the scenes, something can be quite complicated. At the front, the user shouldn’t have to notice.

No software for software’s sake.

Just make sure it works.

Gwoan GWOD.