Executive snapshot
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Company: H3X Technologies
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Industry: High-performance electric motors, specifically integrated motor drives (IMDs) with co-optimized inverters, for aerospace, defense, marine, and heavy industry.
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Location: Louisville, Colorado
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Team: Grown from 20 to 60+ employees, majority in manufacturing
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Production: ~150–200 units/year today, targeting 2,000/year by 2029
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Manufacturo customer since: 2023
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Challenge: Move from Excel/Word/manual prototype tracking to repeatable, traceable, scalable production
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Why Manufacturo: MES depth + modular configurability + technician-friendly interface, chosen before first customer deliveries
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Highlights: Pedigree, embedded quality, live inventory master, nonconformance/supplier-escape control, build-level cost data, custom reporting/API
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Results: Deployed to MVP in under 3 months; scaled 20→60+ on the same platform; true as-built cost per motor
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What's Next: New dedicated facility, ramp to 2,000 units/year by 2029
The client: Rewriting the rules of electric motor design
H3X Technologies was founded in 2020, on the conviction that the electric motor industry had accepted unnecessary limitations. By rethinking materials, manufacturing methodologies, and design assumptions from first principles, H3X has developed motors that deliver industry-leading power density at a fraction of the weight of conventional motors. Their products are lightweight, high-performance, efficient, and cost-effective, designed to work across a wide variety of industries where all four of those qualities are critically important.
Their markets span commercial and defense aviation, marine, mining, oil and gas, and other mobile heavy industry sectors where motor weight and efficiency directly impact vehicle operational capability. Many of H3X's products serve both commercial markets and defense sectors simultaneously, making them applicable across virtually any demanding real-world environment.
H3X is based in Louisville, Colorado, where they run a state-of-the-art 17,000-square-foot facility.
The challenge: Improving revision control, traceability and build tracking
In their early days, H3X's documentation lived in Excel and Word files, which made the revision control tedious and unreliable, and inventory was tracked manually. Build repeatability was surfacing as a problem despite the team not yet shipping a single customer unit.
“Using Excel sheets and Word documents, we had no real revision control, no consolidated database of what processes we’d run. We had no traceability on the characteristics of parts and what we were using.”
Eric Maciolek, Founder of H3X Technologies
The challenge was to modernize and streamline the documentation process in a way that would be scalable and match the complexity of H3X's manufacturing process.
The solution: Replacing spreadsheets with a comprehensive manufacturing platform
Eric Maciolek, Founder of H3X, performed an extensive analysis of production management solutions, including MES and ERP options, and landed on Manufacturo as the best fit for the company's needs. Manufacturo's features checked all the key requirements boxes, including embedded quality, exceptional traceability, and a structured change management process.
The two aspects that really stood out were the depth of MES functionality combined with a modular, configurable structure and the user-friendly interface.
Usability was particularly important for H3X, since their shop floor consisted mostly of highly skilled labor. Information entered at workstations was the backbone of data throughout the production system, which in turn drove key business decisions. Their MES had to easily facilitate technicians' data entry with clear rules and workflows, with no room for ambiguity, and without extensive training.
“What sold me on Manufacturo was the technician interface. It had to make it so easy for them to do the right thing and populate the right data—with the least amount of explanation or training.”
Eric Maciolek, Founder of H3X Technologies
Partnership in practice
Working closely with Manufacturo's services team, H3X had the platform configured and running in under three months. Rather than a full rollout, they started with the highest-priority gaps in process plans and data collections. As the company's footprint expanded, platform capabilities were added in stages as needed, including inventory, which was a crucial capability for production line efficiency and cost control.
“The Manufacturo team has been incredibly responsive. Their help center portal is probably the best we’ve seen across our entire tech stack—clear documentation, a real feature roadmap, and visibility into what other customers are working on. I feel like our growth is aligned.”
Eric Maciolek, Founder of H3X Technologies
The results: A full visibility into production data
Before using Manufacturo, parts were tracked over spreadsheets. Now, H3X has a live inventory master tied directly into process plans, giving them real-time visibility into what was on hand and how it was being consumed, reducing losses and improving inventory utilization across the operation.
Metric
H3X Result
As-built cost visibility
More than 90%
Team scaled without re-implementation
20 → 60+ employees, same platform
Deployment time to MVP
Less than 3 months
This data has clear value for a manufacturer producing high-value, high-variability products with material costs in constant flux. Cost overruns are visible in real time. Variance across assemblies can be analyzed. The production team has accurate numbers to work from, not estimates. Other results include:
- Reduced inventory losses and improved inventory utilization across the operation
- Pedigree applies the right level of process control to products at different maturity levels, letting H3X move fast in development while keeping full production visibility
- R&D knowledge carries directly into production rather than being rebuilt from scratch or siloed
- Every unit fully traced, capturing actual materials consumed and labor time recorded against process steps
- Custom analytics extended through the API and data exports, turning the manufacturing record into operational intelligence across the business
H3X is already extending that capability further, running custom analytics through the API and data exports—turning Manufacturo's deep manufacturing record into operational intelligence that feeds decisions across the business.
“With this level of traceability, you can get labor costs and as-built BOM cost for every product you make. Most platforms don’t allow this—they don’t have the depth of data and they make bulk assumptions. We can see the variance, we can see cost overruns, and that feeds our operations team live.”
Eric Maciolek, Founder of H3X Technologies
H3X gained the advanced pedigree control
One feature that H3X is taking real advantage of is unique to Manufacturo: pedigree. It's a mechanism that applies different levels of rigor to processes so that rules of production match engineering intent. H3X uses pedigree control to ensure the right level of process control goes into development and production, while keeping workflows and records in the same system.
That same system of record extends to nonconformance and supply chain management. For example, when a defective part makes it through from a supplier, the team has full visibility into every detail of the build, allowing for rapid identification of affected units, issue containment, and the removal of impacted inventory.
With significant supply chain exposure in materials like copper, neodymium, samarium, and cobalt, H3X must not only quickly identify and redress problems but also track how fluctuations in those material indices flow through to per-unit costs, which is something Manufacturo addresses with custom built reports.
“Pedigree is key to allowing companies like ours to scale. If you apply the same level of controls you use on a mature product to something brand new, you’ll never build it. Manufacturo lets us move fast in development and still have the visibility we need.”
Eric Maciolek, Founder of H3X Technologies
The future: Supporting H3X to 2,000 of units and beyond
H3X has an ambitious growth trajectory ahead, building a dedicated manufacturing facility to support a production ramp from roughly 200 units today to 2,000 annually by 2029.
The physical facility expansion is the next step in an infrastructure H3X has been constructing since 2023. By choosing Manufacturo early and configuring it to scale with them, H3X built a manufacturing foundation designed to move as fast as the business demands.
For H3X, choosing Manufacturo is central to how the team operates and grows. From the technician on the floor entering build data to the operations team making real-time cost decisions, Manufacturo runs through every layer of the business. That is the result of a deliberate decision made early, and a platform that has delivered on its promise.
“Our investment in documentation and building the structure and systems in Manufacturo gives us really high confidence that we’ll be able to scale as needed over the next few years and still maintain that level of quality and traceability.”
Eric Maciolek, Founder of H3X Technologies
