About

I’m Elias Burlison. I work inside the scrap and recycling world, and my job is to put software, AI, and measurement into a business that has run on tribal knowledge and a clipboard for a long time. I build the tools — the operating sheets, the dashboards, the sorting and measurement lines — and I write about what changes when you do.

Most coverage of heavy industry is written from the outside looking in. This isn’t. It’s field notes from the floor: what breaks, what holds, and which lessons turn out to generalize past the yard. I’m less interested in what automation could do than in reporting what it did — including the parts that didn’t work.

The throughline

The idea I keep circling is what I call the material identity layer: measurement, lineage, and quality as the quiet thing that reshapes who wins in a commodity business. When you can actually identify, measure, and trace what you’re handling, the economics change — and the advantage compounds for whoever instruments it first.

Ground rules

• Abstractions, not secrets. I write about lessons and frameworks, sourced to public methods and public data — never anyone’s proprietary numbers, customers, or strategy. The test for every piece: would it be fine if my CEO read it tomorrow?
• Operator-grounded. Falsifiable, cited, and grounded in real work.
• Two speeds. Short field notes when the floor teaches me something; longer essays when a pattern is worth a proper argument.

Find me on LinkedIn, or — better — get on the list, where the essays land first.

Views are my own and do not represent my employer.