---
title: "Software factory: a history in 17 working models | Annsa"
product: annsa
url: /software-factory
canonical_url: "https://annsa.ai/software-factory"
last_updated: 2026-11-10
type: product
summary: A short history of the factory in 17 working 3D models, from the pyramid builders at Giza to Ford, Toyota and the software factory run by AI agents.
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disambiguation: "Annsa (annsa.ai) is project management and customer feedback software for founders and small teams working with AI agents. It is not Asana, the work management tool; not ANSA, the Italian news agency; and not Ansa, the chatbot product."
---

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# Software factory: a history in 17 working models | Annsa

> A short history of the factory in 17 working 3D models, from the pyramid builders at Giza to Ford, Toyota and the software factory run by AI agents.

a history in 17 working models

## From the pyramids to the software factory.

For more than 4,000 years people have worked on one problem: how to get many hands to make one thing well. Each answer added one idea. Every one is still in use.

Scroll to walk through them. Drag any model to look around.

around 2570 BC · the day’s work, written down

## Giza

The Great Pyramid needed white limestone from a quarry across the Nile. An inspector named Merer ran the crew of 40 that shipped it and kept a diary: where they loaded, where they sailed, where they slept.

It is the oldest papyrus with writing ever found. Beside it lay account sheets for the workers’ bread, beer and meat: what was needed, what had arrived, what was still owed.

Quarried at Tura →Shipped down the Nile →Hauled to the site →Logged that day →The Great Pyramid

**What it added: the log.** A written record of who moved what, each day.

[Read Merer’s diary (Wikipedia) ↗](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary_of_Merer)

around 210 BC · made to a standard

## The Qin workshops

The First Emperor of China was buried with a clay army and some 40,000 bronze weapons. Each crossbow trigger has 5 parts: 3 that move and 2 bolts.

Researchers who measured more than 200 of them found they were made in batches to a standard. Many weapons carry the mark of the workshop that made them, so a bad one could be traced.

Cast parts →Filed to fit →Assembled →Marked by its workshop →Trigger

**What it added: a standard.** Every part alike, and a name on the work.

[The trigger study (University College London) ↗](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/terracotta-army/news/2014/mar/crossbow-triggers-and-imperial-craft-organisation)

1500s · one of the earliest production lines

## Venice Arsenal

Venice needed warships faster than any yard could build them, so the Arsenal stopped building each ship in one place. A bare hull was towed down a canal, and every warehouse it passed handed over its part.

At its peak the yard could turn out close to one ship a day.

Bare hull →Mast →Sail →Oars →Galley

**What it added: flow.** The work moves. The workers stay put.

[Read about the real Arsenal ↗](https://historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=1596)

1771 · the first water-powered cotton mill

## Cromford Mill

Richard Arkwright had a spinning machine too big for a cottage. He built a mill beside a stream in Derbyshire and put the water wheel, the machines and the people under one roof, working to one clock.

A silk mill in Derby had done something similar 50 years earlier. Cromford is the one the world copied.

Raw cotton →Carded by hand →Spun on water frames →Yarn

**What it added: one roof.** One source of power and one clock for everybody.

[See the mill today (UNESCO) ↗](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1030/)

1780s to 1830s · the tool that holds the skill

## The jig

Before the jig, every part was filed by hand to fit the one beside it. A jig holds the piece and guides the tool, so the part comes out the same whoever is working.

French gunmakers showed swappable parts in the 1780s. American armories made them routine by the 1830s.

Rough blank →Clamped →Drilled through the guide →Identical part

**What it added: repeatability.** The skill moves out of the hand and into the tool.

[The story of interchangeable parts ↗](https://www.americanheritage.com/eli-whitneys-other-talent)

1803 · machines in sequence

## Portsmouth Block Mills

The navy ran on wooden pulley blocks, each cut by hand. Marc Brunel designed a run of machines that each made a single cut. Henry Maudslay built them, and steam drove them through shafts overhead.

By the traditional figure, 10 men now did the work of 110.

Elm block →Sawn →Bored →Shaped →Pulley block

**What it added: machines in sequence.** Each machine makes one cut. The cuts add up.

[See the block mills (Historic England) ↗](https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/reports/7165/THEPORTSMOUTHBLOCKMILLS-THESTARTOFAREVOLUTION)

meanwhile, in Australia

**1907 · Sunshine Harvester Works, Melbourne.** A judge used one of the country’s largest factories as his test case and ruled that a wage must support a family of 5. It shaped Australia’s minimum wage for the next 70 years. [source](https://nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/harvester-judgement)

**1912 · Lithgow Small Arms Factory.** American machines, jigs and gauges arrived in the Blue Mountains to build rifles with interchangeable parts. It is remembered as Australia’s first high-precision mass production plant. [source](https://www.visitnsw.com/node/66356)

1913 · the moving assembly line

## Ford Highland Park

Ford’s engineers turned the job around. The men used to walk to the car. Now the car came to them, pulled past in a fixed order at a set pace.

By early 1914, building a chassis took about 1.5 hours, down from about 12.

Bare frame →Wheels →Engine →Body →Model T

**What it added: pace.** The line sets the speed. Nobody goes looking for work.

[See the line (The Henry Ford) ↗](https://askus.thehenryford.org/K12/faq/433848)

1924 · the machine that stops itself

## The Toyoda loom

A loom that keeps weaving after a thread breaks makes cloth nobody can sell. The Toyoda Type G, finished in 1924, stopped itself the moment a thread snapped and changed its own shuttle without pausing.

One person could now mind dozens of looms. In 1937 the loom company’s car department became Toyota.

Thread →Woven →A thread breaks →The loom stops →Flawless cloth

**What it added: a machine that knows when to stop.** Stop at the fault. Never pass it on.

[See the loom run (AllAboutLean) ↗](https://www.allaboutlean.com/toyoda-model-g/)

1942 · the line at its largest

## Willow Run

Then came the test of how far a line could stretch. Ford built a hall about a mile long outside Detroit and ran bombers down it the way it ran cars.

By 1944 a finished B-24 rolled out roughly every hour.

Fuselage →Wings →Tail →Engines →B-24 bomber

**What it added: scale.** The same method, applied to something enormous.

[See a photograph from 1944 (The Henry Ford) ↗](https://www.thehenryford.org/collections/explore/artifact/229817)

1950s to 70s · the line that stops and learns

## Toyota

Every line so far ran one way, and a mistake traveled with it to the end. Toyota gave every worker a cord. Pull it and a lamp lights. If the problem can’t be fixed in time, the whole line stops.

The fix then becomes the new standard. Watch the cards build up on the rack.

Customer order →Card pulls the parts →Assembly →Car, and a better standard

**What it added: learning.** Every stop leaves the line better than it was.

[The andon cord, in Toyota’s words ↗](https://mag.toyota.co.uk/toyota-manufacturing-25-objects-andon-cord)

1987 · the factory with no product of its own

## TSMC

Until 1987, a company that designed a chip also had to own the factory that made it. Morris Chang founded TSMC in Hsinchu, Taiwan, to make other people’s designs and none of its own.

Designers no longer needed a factory, and the factory never competed with its customers.

A design →Sent to the fab →Made on silicon →Chips sent back

**What it added: the split.** One side designs. The other builds.

[TSMC’s history (Britannica) ↗](https://britannica.com/topic/Taiwan-Semiconductor-Manufacturing-Co)

2000s · nobody on the floor

## The lights-out factory

Once the standards were good enough, the people could leave. FANUC is reported to have run a robot plant this way since 2001: robots building robots through the night, with the lights off.

In this model one person watches from a lit window and steps in only when something goes wrong.

Parts →Machined by robots →Assembled by robots →A new robot

**What it added: absence.** People handle the exceptions and nothing else.

[FANUC on its own production ↗](https://fanuc.co.jp/en/profile/production)

2012 onwards · robots and people together

## Amazon’s warehouses

A warehouse is a factory that makes parcels. In Amazon’s, robots carry whole shelves to the person picking, and one system routes the entire fleet so the robots stay out of each other’s way.

More than a million robots now work there, nearly as many as the people.

Customer order →Shelf carried to the station →Item picked →Parcel

**What it added: coordination.** One plan for more than a million workers.

[See the robots (About Amazon) ↗](https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/amazon-million-robots-ai-foundation-model)

2018 · automation goes too far

## Tesla Fremont

Tesla set out to build its Model 3 with as few people as it could, then missed its target of 2,500 cars a week. Elon Musk’s verdict was that excessive automation had been a mistake, and his own: “Humans are underrated.”

The company scrapped a complex conveyor and brought people back onto the line.

Car body →Too many robots →The line stalls →People return →Model 3

**What it added: a limit.** Some work still needs a person, and it pays to know which.

[What happened (Fortune) ↗](https://fortune.com/2018/04/13/tesla-elon-musk-robot-human-model-3/)

2020s · the product keeps changing

## SpaceX Starfactory

Every factory before this one made the same thing again and again. Starfactory builds a rocket whose design keeps changing from one batch to the next.

Crews stack steel rings into sections while the line is rebuilt around them, so people still work alongside the robots.

Steel rings →Stacked sections →Nose, flaps, engines →Starship

**What it added: change.** The product is redesigned while it is being built.

[Inside Starfactory (NASASpaceflight) ↗](https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2026/03/steel-rolls-to-starship/)

2026 · in the cloud, loops around one plan

## The software factory

A software factory has no building. It runs in the cloud, and it is made of loops.

Start with one loop, for software. A signal comes in. The agent checks the plan and decides. It builds. The work passes a check. The output ships, and the loop goes round again.

One agent, one job at a time. A person checks every result.

2026 · more loops

## One loop becomes several

Backend, UI and security each run a loop of their own inside product.

Agents start every job with no memory of the last one. So at the center sit the two things the factory cannot lose: the plan, and a brain that keeps what every loop learned.

2026 · the whole business

## Then it broadens out

Pull back. The loop that builds software can run the rest of the business too.

Service, marketing, sales, growth, operations and finance get loops of their own, around the same plan and the same brain.

2026 · bigger and faster

## And it speeds up

Every part runs more loops, quicker. A job waits for you only when it falls outside the rules.

**What it adds: a system that remembers.** Every loop reads the plan and feeds the brain, so each time round starts from more than the last.

[Where the phrase “software factory” came from (MIT) ↗](https://core.ac.uk/download/4385097.pdf)

what the software factory kept

## Old ideas, in a new place

Almost nothing in the software factory is new. Each part was worked out earlier on this page.

**A written log of the day’s work.** Giza

**A standard, and a name on the work.** Qin

**Work that flows between specialists.** Venice

**One clock for everybody.** Cromford

**Know-how held in a tool.** The jig

**Small steps that add up.** Portsmouth

**Nobody goes looking for work.** Ford

**Stop at the fault.** The Toyoda loom

**Every stop improves the standard.** Toyota

**One side designs, the other builds.** TSMC

**It runs while nobody watches.** Lights-out

**One plan for many workers.** Amazon

**A person for the calls that need one.** Tesla

**The product changes while it is built.** SpaceX

what is new

## Four things no factory had before

**The workers can read.** A jig had to be cut from steel. An agent takes its instructions in plain words, so a rule can be written in a minute and changed in another.

**It has no floor.** Nothing is bolted down. It runs in the cloud: one automation on repeat in the morning, a hundred agents by the afternoon.

**The work finds itself.** Agents notice problems and put them on the plan themselves.

**It changes its own shape.** People rebuilt every earlier factory between runs. This one adds agents and removes stops while it runs.

**What stays the same: the plan.** Every factory on this page ran on something that said what comes next. The more a factory can do alone, the more that one thing matters.

next · beyond software

## Where the factory goes next

The pattern is now leaving software and heading back to the physical world: one plan, many workers, a check and loops that carry what was learned back to the start.

**Robots.** Humanoid robots are starting on live production lines, on narrow jobs such as moving boxes, with people supervising. [source](https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/physical-ai-humanoid-robots-factories/)

**Machinery.** The controllers that run a line are moving into software, so a line can be re-arranged the way code is changed. [source](https://www.capgemini.com/insights/expert-perspectives/building-the-foundations-of-an-intelligent-factory/)

**Laboratories.** In a self-driving lab, robots run the experiment and a model chooses the next one. [source](https://www.pnnl.gov/news-media/autonomy-accelerates-science-national-scale)

**Services.** Some firms now sell the finished work, such as a set of closed books, where they used to sell the tool. [source](https://foundationcapital.com/ai-service-as-software/)

**What it may add: reach.** One plan for work of every kind, not only code.

**Factory or system?** A factory is a place you can watch. A system is what decides how that place changes. Toyota called its method a production system, not a factory. This page shows factories because you can watch a floor.

sources

## Where the facts come from

Every date and figure on this page was checked against the sources below.

**Giza.** [Oldest papyrus: the Diary of Merer (Guinness World Records)](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/711805-oldest-papyrus)

**Qin workshops.** [Review of Bronze Weapons of the Qin Terracotta Warriors (Project MUSE)](https://muse.jhu.edu/article/857948)

**Toyoda loom.** [History of the Toyota Production System](https://resources.rework.com/libraries/history-of-management/history-of-toyota-production-system-lean)

**TSMC.** [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (Britannica)](https://britannica.com/topic/Taiwan-Semiconductor-Manufacturing-Co)

**Tesla Fremont.** [Tesla CEO admits “Humans are underrated” (Fortune)](https://fortune.com/2018/04/13/tesla-elon-musk-robot-human-model-3/)

**Venice Arsenal.** [Venetian Arsenal (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal)

**Venice Arsenal.** [History of Information: the Arsenal’s production line](https://historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=1596)

**Cromford Mill.** [Derwent Valley Mills (UNESCO World Heritage)](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1030/)

**Cromford Mill.** [The Silk Mill, Derby (Derwent Valley Mills)](https://www.derwentvalleymills.org/discover/derwent-valley-mills-history/derwent-valley-mills-key-sites/key-sites-the-silk-mill/)

**The jig.** [Eli Whitney’s Other Talent (American Heritage)](https://www.americanheritage.com/eli-whitneys-other-talent)

**Portsmouth Block Mills.** [The Start of a Revolution (Historic England)](https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/reports/7165/THEPORTSMOUTHBLOCKMILLS-THESTARTOFAREVOLUTION)

**Ford Highland Park.** [Assembly line research guide (The Henry Ford)](https://askus.thehenryford.org/K12/faq/433848)

**Willow Run.** [B-24 Liberator assembly line, 1944 (The Henry Ford)](https://www.thehenryford.org/collections/explore/artifact/229817)

**Toyota.** [Toyota Production System timeline (Toyota)](https://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75years/data/automotive_business/production/system/change.html)

**Toyota.** [The andon cord (Toyota UK)](https://mag.toyota.co.uk/toyota-manufacturing-25-objects-andon-cord)

**Lights-out factory.** [Lights out manufacturing (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_out_(manufacturing))

**Amazon.** [A million robots and a new AI model (About Amazon)](https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/amazon-million-robots-ai-foundation-model)

**SpaceX Starfactory.** [From Steel Rolls to Starship (NASASpaceflight)](https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2026/03/steel-rolls-to-starship/)

**Software factory.** [Cusumano, The Software Factory (MIT)](https://core.ac.uk/download/4385097.pdf)

**Software factory.** [Harness engineering (OpenAI)](https://openai.com/blog/harness-engineering)

**Software factory.** [Compound engineering (Every)](https://every.to/chain-of-thought/compound-engineering-how-every-codes-with-agents)

**Software factory.** [Built by Agents, Tested by Agents, Trusted by Whom? (Stanford Law)](https://law.stanford.edu/2026/02/08/built-by-agents-tested-by-agents-trusted-by-whom/)

Two soft spots remain. The Venice output figure and the FANUC date rest on secondary sources.

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