Make every plant floor think for itself.

A founder seated mid-interview in a dark, plant-filled room — photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels
Building what comes next Our Story

Where You Are Today

You are firefighting all day. Finance finds three-week-old data errors during month-end close. Plant managers rewrite the schedule four times before lunch. Quality leads argue a scrap decision for eight hours while two lines drift off-spec. Your best operations run on unofficial spreadsheets that somehow beat the million-dollar system. That is not a technology problem. It is an intelligence problem.

Where Your Plant Goes Next

Picture operations that think a shift ahead — scheduling, tracking, adjusting, learning — while you work on strategy and growth. Your systems finally speak your language. Tribal knowledge becomes organizational knowledge. Your floor leads spend the day on craft, not paperwork. You solve next quarter's problems instead of this morning's. No more choosing between upgrading the system and running the line. No more shadow IT keeping the lights on. Just intelligent manufacturing that scales with your ambition instead of your anxiety.

What We Are Building Toward

Every plant — from 28-person job shops to multinational groups — deserves real reasoning at its core. When manufacturing thinks for itself: small shops compete with the giants. "We have always done it this way" turns into continuous improvement. Manufacturing jobs become careers in invention. Industry leads on intelligence, not only on scale. And your kids want to work on a shop floor again.

What We Promise You

Your business is not a template. Your processes evolved for reasons a consultant will never fully understand. Your spreadsheet veterans know things no ERP has ever captured. You deserve intelligence that adapts to your reality, not the reverse. Technology that learns your vocabulary. Systems that grow with your ambition. Manufacturing that thinks, so you can lead.

Ready?

Whether you are buried in spreadsheets, fighting fires, or worn down by software that promises everything and ships complexity — you deserve better. The future of manufacturing is not swapping people for machines. It is giving you the intelligent partner you have earned. Because when your plant can think, you can finally lead.

The People Behind Kilnwork

Operators and builders who have run real plants and shipped real systems.

Portrait of Ana Vergara — photo by Thanh Xuan Nguyen Ly on Pexels

Ana Vergara

Founder & CEO

Kilnwork.

Bio

Ana previously founded Cadence Freight (YC W15), acquired by Ryder, and before that built Portul, the first cross-border parts network in Eastern Europe. After nine months walking shop floors trying to understand why plants run on spreadsheets instead of software, she started Kilnwork to put real reasoning at the center of industrial work. She believes the future is not replacing operators with robots, but giving them partners that actually hold up under load.

The Kilnwork team standing together in the studio — photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels
Portrait of Dale Whitcomb — photo by Korede Adenola on Pexels

Dale Whitcomb

Advisor

Retired SVP of Innovation at Kestrel Paper

Bio

Dale's work in automated reasoning and narrow industrial AI shaped a category the analysts later named "deep automation." Across three decades transforming operations at Kestrel Paper, Danforth Pulp, and Ochre Industries, he changed how Fortune 500 manufacturers use models on the floor. Named Visionary of the Year (Smart Industry, 2021) and Innovator of the Year (ASPI, 2018), Dale now advises Kilnwork on joining advanced reasoning to manufacturing reality.

Portrait of Owen Baptiste — photo by Ben Khatry on Pexels

Owen Baptiste

Advisor

COO at Harrowgate Beverage Co.

Bio

Owen reshaped operations across 22 years at Coldbrook Brewing, then as Head of Operations at Marlin Bottling and later Kestrel Springs. Now COO at Harrowgate Beverage and founder of the OPSJAM community, he has built teams that hold sustainable results across manufacturing, supply chain, procurement, and logistics. He recently finished MIT's digital supply chain program to bridge traditional excellence with modern tooling, and advises Kilnwork on translating enterprise-scale operational discipline to shop floor reality.

Portrait of Priya Raghunathan — photo by Foto Sushi on Pexels

Priya Raghunathan

Head of Product / Advisor

Prev. Trek & VP of Product at Halyard

Bio

Priya ran product management for Trek's global digital transformation, partnering with the executive team to shape the technology behind its direct-to-consumer strategy. Previously VP of Product at Halyard, she scaled B2B partner operations across 14 markets, and before that transformed enterprise data at Lore IO. With 16 years scaling technology companies through product and platform work, Priya designed and helped build the Kilnwork product from the ground up.

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