After 22 years working across aerospace and defence manufacturing — from shop floor to senior operations management — the same problems kept appearing. Critical documents buried in folder chaos. Quality planning tools that didn't reflect how certified manufacturers actually work. Software built by people who had never stood next to a CNC machine or closed out an NCR.
Ian Scoular, founder
I'm Ian, founder of Pathix. I started on the shop floor in 2004 and worked my way up through some of the UK's most demanding precision engineering environments — AS9100D and NADCAP certified operations, CNC machining, composite material manufacturing, metal assembly, lean manufacturing, and quality systems. I've led teams of up to 70 people and managed operations where getting it wrong isn't just a commercial problem — it's a safety one.
This industry has been my career, my challenge, and a big part of who I am. I've spent more time than I'd like to admit on shop floors at six in the morning trying to track down a drawing revision, find out where a batch of parts actually was, or work out whether a delivery was going to make it on time.
Why Pathix exists
The frustration that drove Pathix was simple. The tools I needed didn't exist, so I built them myself — spreadsheets, trackers, workbooks — just to do my job properly. And even then, finding the right document or information on a shared drive was a daily battle. Time wasted searching instead of doing. After enough years of that, I decided to stop patching the problem and build something that actually solves it.
Pathix exists because that experience is not unique. Small and mid-sized A&D manufacturers are running complex, certified operations with inadequate tools. The big ERP vendors are too expensive and too generic. Spreadsheets and shared drives are holding capable shops back.
Every product in the Pathix suite was built from the inside out — by someone who lived the problem, not just researched it. From mobile reference tools on the shop floor to document search, quality planning, and full operational management — every part of the suite exists because the problem was real and the solution wasn't good enough.
