The story of Brilforge starts on the shop floor of an aerospace prime in 2012.
And ends — for now — at a $200M packaging plant in Manchester that still runs work orders on paper.
The Solumina years (2012–2015)
In 2012, fresh out of college, Vikas Singh joined a team building Manufacturing Execution Systems on the Solumina platform for aerospace and defense primes.
Solumina is the software that runs inside the hangars of Boeing, Lockheed, and their Tier-1 suppliers. It tracks every torque, every signoff, every quality hold on parts that have to fly without failing.
Three years on that platform teaches you a few things:
- Strict state machines beat clever shortcuts every time.
- Audit trails are the product, not a feature.
- Edge cases are 80% of the work.
- Humans don't just stay in the loop — they own the loop.
It also teaches you that the software industry has built two parallel worlds. One for the Fortune 500. Another for everyone else.
The everyone-else world is bigger.
Building Brilworks (2015–2025)
Vikas left aerospace MES to start Brilworks, a software development firm serving startup founders globally. Twelve years and several hundred shipped products later, Brilworks has become a trusted partner for early-stage and growth-stage technology companies.
The last two years of that work tilted toward AI agents — first as experimentation, then as a core practice. Brilworks now ships agent-based products across half a dozen industries.
But the more Vikas talked to founders asking "where do AI agents actually create value," the clearer one answer became.
The shift back to the floor
In 2025, Vikas spent a quarter walking through manufacturing plants in the UK, the Middle East, and India. What he saw, repeatedly:
- $150M–$300M manufacturers running work orders on paper in 2026.
- ERP systems that don't know what's happening on the floor.
- OEM customers demanding traceability that the plant can't deliver.
- Tier-1 SIs quoting $1M for 18-month MES rollouts that the plant can't afford.
The gap between what mid-market manufacturers need and what's available to them is enormous. And it's exactly the gap that aerospace MES rigor — applied at mid-market speed and price — was built to close.
So Brilforge exists.
What Brilforge does
We build manufacturing software for mid-market plants ($50M–$300M revenue) in industrial machinery, packaging machinery, plastics processing, and EV Tier 2-3 supply chains.
Our offerings are productized: Shop Floor Digitization Sprint (8 weeks), MES Modernization Audit (4 weeks), ERP-to-Shop-Floor Integration (10–14 weeks), AI Quality Pilot (12 weeks), OEE Dashboard Implementation (6 weeks).
Each is fixed-scope, fixed-price, fixed-timeline. No $1M quotes. No 18-month projects.
What Brilforge doesn't do
We don't take aerospace primes (their procurement model isn't built for boutiques). We don't take Fortune 500 manufacturers (we'd be a sub-contractor under Cognizant anyway). We don't quote against offshore-rate competitors. We don't sell hardware, robotics, or PLC programming — we partner with people who do.
The team
Vikas leads the studio. The delivery team is drawn from Brilworks, the parent company, which has been shipping production software for over a decade.
We're hiring a manufacturing domain SME and a founding senior engineer. If that's you, get in touch.
Why we're publishing this story
Most software services agencies hide behind a corporate facade. We don't.
Vikas is building Brilforge publicly on LinkedIn — the wins, the lessons, the conversations with plant managers, the parts we still get wrong. If you want to see how the studio is being built in real time, follow along.
If you build, operate, or sell into mid-market manufacturing, we'd love to hear from you.