{"id":82777,"title":"Poka Labs: The Modern Operating System for Chemical Manufacturing","tagline":"We put chemical production planning on autopilot","body":"### Summary:\n\n* We help chemical manufacturers automate their production planning and scheduling without the need for spreadsheets or complex implementations\n* Schedule a demo - \u003chttps://www.pokalabs.com/\u003e\n\nHi everyone! We’re Andrew and Malay — the founders of Poka Labs.\n\n### ❌ Problem\n\nProduction planning is the “brains” of chemical operations. Yet even today, the $5.6 trillion chemical industry relies on spreadsheets and humans to manage the process.\n\nThis leaves plants to constantly fight fires in order to meet customer orders on time and maximize manufacturing margins. Any change, such as inventory delays, labor shortages, or unexpected maintenance, further stresses operations. Existing systems, such as ERPs, are too rigid in their data inputs to adapt to these types of changes.\n\n### ✅ Our Solution: Adaptive Production Planning with AI\n\nPoka Labs integrates with existing information (data historians, emails, PDFs, ERPs, etc) to put chemical production scheduling on **autopilot**. Our software automates analytics, scheduling, changes, and communication within one platform that anyone can use.\n\nWith Poka Labs, chemical plants can:\n\n* Maximize revenue\n* Minimize transition costs\n* Eliminate messy spreadsheets\n* Increase visibility\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=82777\u0026key=user_uploads/1512280/c60251e7-3d4b-40ca-b900-9880d3597a4a)\n\n### 🎉 Our Story\n\n[Malay](https://linkedin.com/in/yalamshah) is a chemical engineer who has worked in chemical plants across 3 continents. He experienced these issues firsthand and saved his prior employers over $100+ million on process improvement and production planning projects.\n\nHe met [Andrew](https://linkedin.com/in/andrewbass) while they were pursuing their MBA at Harvard Business School. Andrew worked as a software engineer on data infrastructure systems at Meta before working on optimization problems at a seed-stage startup. He also completed a Masters degree at Harvard specializing in ML.\n\nTogether, we’re passionate about deploying modern software in the chemical industry.\n\n### ❓ The Ask\n\n* If you work in chemical manufacturing, we’d love to chat! Contact [malay@pokalabs.com](mailto:malay@pokalabs.com)\n* Share this post! Is there anyone in your network that deals with planning for chemicals? We’d love to chat with them\n  * _Copy \u0026 paste blurb_: A team of Harvard grads created an AI-powered production planning platform designed for the chemical industry. It automates scheduling, changes, and analytics in one platform. Put your plant on autopilot with Poka Labs. Contact [malay@pokalabs.com](mailto:malay@pokalabs.com) to see a demo from the founders.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=82777\u0026key=user_uploads/1512280/50e570cf-b34b-4d74-a706-0f28dc480c5f)\n\n","slug":"LX7-poka-labs-the-modern-operating-system-for-chemical-manufacturing","created_at":"2024-08-06T16:41:26.311Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T01:02:47.706Z","total_vote_count":207,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/LX7-poka-labs-the-modern-operating-system-for-chemical-manufacturing","share_image_url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=82777\u0026key=user_uploads/1512280/50e570cf-b34b-4d74-a706-0f28dc480c5f","company":{"id":29251,"name":"Poka Labs","slug":"poka-labs","url":"https://www.pokalabs.com/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/c3db3e4b14d4a36988633e929d3562b45dfa8d41.png","batch":"Summer 2024","industry":"B2B","tags":["SaaS","Supply Chain","AI","Industrial"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/29251"}}