Why Veryable Was Created: The Origin, the Industry Problems Behind It, and How Real-World Experience Shapes Our Mission Today

In industrial operations, the challenge has never been the what. The what is extraordinary. Automation, AI, digital twins, robotics, and every major Industry 4.0 innovation are remarkable on their own.

‍

The challenge is the why and the how. Why these tools fail to reach their potential inside real facilities and how fixed labor models create barriers that no technology can overcome.

‍

Veryable was created because two industry veterans realized that until labor becomes flexible, even the most advanced tools cannot deliver the impact leaders expect. Their experience inside plants and warehouses revealed something the industry still struggles with today. Companies are trying to modernize on top of a labor model that cannot adjust to daily reality. As long as labor stays rigid, operations stay rigid, and even the most powerful technology struggles to take hold.

‍

This insight became the foundation of Veryable’s mission. The company was not built as a technology experiment or as an alternative staffing method. It was built to solve the constraint at the center of every operational challenge and to give leaders a practical way to match labor to the pace of modern production.

‍

‍

The Early Career Experience That Exposed the Real Constraint

‍

A Manufacturing Operator Turned Plant Leader Turned Strategy Consultant

Before Veryable existed, co-founder Mike Kinder spent more than a decade inside GE plants running production lines, managing materials, supervising shifts, leading global sourcing, and eventually managing entire facilities. From there, he shifted into manufacturing strategy consulting, leading footprint optimization projects, buy-side due diligence, and long-range operational planning for large industrial companies.

‍

Across every company, every factory, every diagnostic, the same thing appeared again and again:

‍

Labor was the immovable constraint.

‍

Companies could upgrade equipment, redesign processes, and modernize systems, but if labor had to be planned and managed like a fixed cost, none of the improvements could reach their full potential.

‍

As Mike described it, every operational problem eventually boiled down to the same two words: “labor and supply chain.” But when you traced supply chain issues back each level, labor was actually the constraint at each node.

‍

‍

An IT Leader Who Saw the Shop Floor from Both Sides

Co-founder Noah Labhart brought the complementary perspective. He spent years in manufacturing IT at Alcon Laboratories, running teams that supported shop floor systems every day. He saw the pressure frontline workers and supervisors faced, the constraints inside the four walls, and the friction between labor planning and operational reality.

‍

But he also worked on the other side, doing hands-on production work in college, giving him an unusually clear perspective on both ends of the labor equation.

‍

After leaving corporate, he built mobile-first startup platforms, learning what does and doesn’t work when building technology people actually rely on.

‍

When Mike pitched the concept of an on-demand labor marketplace, Noah immediately recognized what most people missed:

‍

This wasn’t a tech idea. It was an operational solution.

‍

It solved a real constraint that manufacturing and logistics leaders had been forced to tolerate for decades.

‍

‍

The Moment of Realization: Technology Cannot Fix Operations if Labor Stays Rigid

In consulting, Mike evaluated hundreds of industrial tech offerings on behalf of clients: IoT, automation layers, MES upgrades, machine learning models, predictive tools, everything on the emerging technology menu.

‍

Executives kept asking:
“What do I make of all this? Which tools matter?”

‍

In every case, the same conclusion surfaced every time:

‍

If labor behaves like a fixed cost, none of the advanced tools make economic sense.

‍

When demand moves daily but labor cannot, your entire technology stack is built on a rigid foundation. That rigidity forces leaders to plan around historical averages rather than real demand, which means:

• Investments cannot scale
• Improvements cannot fully take hold
• Production systems cannot adapt
• Costs cannot be controlled in volatile cycles

‍

To fix operations, labor had to become flexible. That wasn’t possible with the traditional models—full-time headcount, temp staffing contracts, scheduled assignments, minimums, fixed blocks of labor time.

‍

The industry needed something else.

‍

‍

Why On-Demand Labor Had to Be Created

Veryable was built to solve the functional constraint that sits under every major operational challenge: inflexible labor.

‍

The concept was simple:

Companies should be able to match labor to demand in real time, using a trained labor pool of on-demand Operators who can be deployed only when needed.

‍

But building that model required a marketplace, something manufacturing had never had before.

‍

In the earliest days, the founders built a crude prototype:

• One app for Operators
• One portal for companies
• One simple workflow

‍

Rough, unpolished, but enough to prove the idea worked.

‍

Pilot companies quickly validated the concept. They could flex capacity the way they always wished they could. They could attack bottlenecks immediately. They could protect full-time teams. They could scale without overextending.

‍

Most importantly: For the first time, labor could move at the speed of operations.

‍

‍

Industry Experience Shaped the Entire Mission

Veryable exists today because both founders understood manufacturing and logistics from inside the operation, not as outsiders trying to “disrupt” the industry.

‍

A Real Understanding of the Shop Floor

The team knew:

• Why labor gaps caused throughput failures
• Why supervisors burned out scheduling, backfilling, and reassigning work
• Why fixed headcount forced companies into overtime, underutilization, or reactive layoffs
• Why complex technology initiatives stalled because labor could not flex
• Why operators needed more flexibility and autonomy to participate in the workforce.

This wasn’t theoretical. It was lived.

‍

‍

A Tool Built for the Real Problems Companies Face

Veryable was designed NOT as a staffing solution, but as an operational tool, a mechanism to:

• Align labor to demand daily
• Reduce lead times & increase speed to customer
• Stabilize cost per unit and protect margins
• Increase output without adding fixed cost
• Maximize throughput daily
• Protect full-time teams from burnout
• Improve service level consistency
• Make reshored and domestic production economically viable
• Eliminate dependency on rigid labor models

‍

And for Operators, it created something the industry had never offered:

• Work when you want
• For the companies you choose
• With skills you build
• With pay delivered daily
• Without being tied to a single employer

‍

This opened the door for an entire portion of the workforce that couldn’t participate in traditional labor models.

‍

‍

Why On-Demand Labor Matters Today More Than Ever

The current global landscape has made the original insight behind Veryable even more urgent. Companies are operating through a period defined by uncertainty: tariff policies continue to shift, supply chains are being reconfigured, and demand patterns are increasingly influenced by external shocks rather than predictable cycles. At the same time, more production is moving closer to the customer, which tightens expectations around lead times and service levels even as volatility grows.

‍

These forces widen the gap between fixed labor capacity and real operational needs. When trade conditions shift abruptly or volume swings faster than hiring cycles can respond, a static labor model becomes costly and inflexible. Companies are left carrying labor built for yesterday’s demand while struggling to support the realities of today.

‍

A fixed labor model cannot keep pace with that level of unpredictability.

‍

An on-demand labor pool can.

‍

‍

The Mission That Drives Veryable Today

Veryable’s mission remains the same as the day it was conceived:

‍

Remove the labor constraint so companies can operate at full potential, and give workers the freedom and flexibility to participate on their own terms.

‍

It is a mission shaped entirely by real experience on the shop floor, in the plant office, and inside the daily struggles that operations leaders face.

‍

We’re building more than a marketplace.
We’re building a system that finally aligns labor with the realities of modern production.

‍

For companies, it means agility, speed, and growth without constraints.

‍

For Operators, it means opportunity, autonomy, and meaningful work on their terms.

For the industry as a whole, it means enabling the adaptability and efficiency required to support reshoring efforts and drive a long-overdue manufacturing revival.

‍

‍

Beyond On-Demand Labor: Expanding the Toolkit for Modern Operations

Veryable’s story didn’t stop with solving labor flexibility. As companies adopted on-demand labor and began operating with greater agility, another need became clear: even with flexible labor capacity, leaders were still forced to manage their workforce with tools that weren’t built for the realities of modern operations.

‍

Labor planning remained fragmented. Daily decision-making relied on spreadsheets, tribal knowledge, and reactive problem-solving. And as markets became more volatile, the cost of misalignment only grew.

‍

In 2023, informed by years spent working directly inside facilities and shoulder-to-shoulder with operations teams, Veryable introduced Workforce Management, a platform designed specifically for manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics environments. Its purpose is simple: help companies plan, manage, and execute labor with the same precision and adaptability they apply to materials, machines, and workflow.

‍

It is the next step in Veryable’s mission: giving companies the tools they need to remove labor as a constraint, build operational resilience, and compete effectively in an environment where uncertainty is the only certainty.

‍

Click here to learn more.