DRA launches 'Build the West V1' — automated work instruction software for manufacturers goes generally available

Summary

DRA (Drax), founded by Phil — an electrical engineer and roboticist who previously held a TS clearance working on radar systems — has just launched Build the West V1, its automated work instruction platform, now generally available as of April 3, 2025. The product is ITAR-compliant and can be deployed on-premises for defense customers via Terraform against a client's own cloud infrastructure.

The problem DRA is solving is mundane but pervasive. When a manufacturing engineer receives a CAD file for something like an engine, they manually deconstruct it, figure out the assembly sequence, take hundreds of screenshots, and compile everything into a several-hundred-page Word or PowerPoint document — a process that takes weeks or months. DRA ingests the CAD file and automatically generates 80 to 90% of the work instruction, leaving the remaining 10 to 20% — the tribal knowledge a human engineer brings — for the engineer to complete. That tribal knowledge capture is increasingly the point: the average American manufacturing engineer is 45 to 55 years old, and post-COVID retirements are draining institutional knowledge faster than it can be documented.

Pricing and customers

DRA prices at $5,000 per seat per year. Current customers span defense, automotive (tier one through three suppliers and OEMs), agriculture, and construction manufacturing. Phil cites Spudnik, a potato harvesting equipment maker, as a recent win alongside unnamed defense and automotive companies.

Tariffs and reshoring

OEMs are more rattled by the new tariff regime than tier one-to-three suppliers, Phil says, because OEMs carry the final markup and face the sharpest margin pressure. Suppliers closer to raw material inputs feel costs rise more directly but have less exposure to the end-market price squeeze. Longer term, he sees tariffs accelerating domestic manufacturing investment — companies like Siemens and Stellantis have already announced US production expansions — which expands DRA's addressable market.

The tribal knowledge thesis

The split between design engineers and manufacturing engineers traces to the CAD software wave of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Before that, both roles were connected by the physical blueprint. CAD pulled mechanical engineers off the shop floor and into the back office; work instructions, the manufacturing-side equivalent, never received a comparable software upgrade. DRA's pitch is that it is finally closing that gap.

The real sales motion, Phil argues, is not automation-as-headcount-reduction. His customers are not buying DRA to lay people off — they are buying it because nine of their ten manufacturing engineers have already retired and the one remaining cannot absorb the documentation load alone. That framing shapes how DRA positions itself against the MBA-led manufacturing rollup trend, which Phil dismisses as destructive: an operator who cuts everyone over 50 loses the tribal knowledge that held the factory together, and no amount of P&L discipline recovers it.