Why Does Stark Want Systems as Complex as a Washing Machine?

Uwe Horstmann says Stark wants its systems to be about as complex to manufacture as a washing machine, because that is what mass production requires.

A two-year-old company can prototype the way a startup does and still design the item for a factory from the beginning. Visitors who know operations looked at the line and said it was about as complex as a washing machine. Horstmann took that as the target. His comparison is ordinary volume: going from a thousand units a month toward ten thousand a month, or a million a year, is hard, and it is still a problem factories already know how to approach. He is describing that class of product. He does not say Stark is building those quantities.

Older defense firms, he says, are strong at a few exquisite and expensive systems, and they will still matter. The part of the market he wants is the other one: rapid changes, close to the user, and built so production can scale. That is the edge he claims for a young company.