Personally, I'm the definitive "lazy programmer." I don't like spending my time moving data from one place to another. So I always start with a view to an API - what am I going to make available, and how. After that, it's a game of trying to add as many connectors as I can. For example, in Kalopa we tie Foudra to our 3D print farm. We have a special work station which is labelled "automatic" and a print farm manager (a simple Go program to talk to the printers and Foudra). Foudra knows the parts and the routing. If we need a rudder bracket for a given BOM, the routing says "this is a fabricated part, it needs 0.03kg of PETG filament, and Workstation group 3D_PRINT". It creates a draft work order, and when we approve the work order, it gets scheduled for printing whenever the printer is free. Because printers can't automatically clear the print bed (well, ours can't), we need Foudra to understand that it can't just schedule the next job. Plus, we don't want Foudra knowing about every type of production process we have, from CNC routers to 3D printers and the glass-fibre shop. We want them all to be treated equally. So Foudra handles this without knowing how. The beauty of integrations.
Every Part and every Workstation has a custom JSON field which is also available via the API. Foudra doesn't know or understand the JSON, it just saves it and delivers it over the API (it can be edited and viewed on the site, too). So we save the name of the GCode file in the custom JSON field, as well as the filament type and the estimated print time. The print manager can use this information to determine whether it can print the part or do we need a filament change. It uses Foudra to let us know that we need to change the filament, again via custom fields. If our production machinery needed someone to change the Froozebracket Adapter on the Frobulator, Foudra could support that without ever knowing what a Frobulator is. No, I don't know what it is, either.
We also didn't want to do a full-blown ERP system. We went down that road before and it was painful. We deliberately removed accounting, ledgers, journals and invoicing from the system. But we did add an integration for Quickbooks Online so our accountant would be happy. Foudra creates the PO, and it gets pushed to Quickbooks. We will add more integrators as time progresses (and the need arises, more importantly). What's your biggest headache in terms of integration?
