ABOUT GRADIENT LAYERWORKS

Most manufacturing problems aren't surprises. Someone saw them coming. A question got ignored. A gate never got built. A part sat on a shelf until assembly day — then stopped production for two days over a $40 fitting.

Gradient Layerworks exists for the moment before that happens.

Who’s Behind It

Mac McKane spent 17 years inside hardware and energy startups — not managing from a distance, but on the floor, at the machine, in the post-mortem.

He's developed in-house processes when no supplier could deliver. Prevented a $30k capital mistake with a two-hour inspection. Traced a $60k field repair crisis back to a single ignored question asked before the first build.

The pattern is always the same: the gap was visible before it got expensive. Someone just didn't have the mandate to close it.

How Engagements work

Every engagement starts with what's actually true — not what the team assumes is true. That means walking the process, reading the parts, talking to the people actually doing the work.

From there the fix is usually obvious. Getting there is the work.

Who we work with

Hardware startups hitting production reality for the first time. R&D teams building processes that don't exist yet. Manufacturers with recurring failures nobody can fully explain.

If your process has gaps nobody has named yet — that's the conversation to have.

Based in Kirkland, WA — Serving hardware teams across the Pacific Northwest and beyond.