Solutions
Solutions for manufacturing
Short answer
Small and mid-sized manufacturing rarely fits a ready-made ERP — the process that makes you different does not fit its fields, and half the company works around it in Excel anyway. We build a custom system for made-to-order production: from enquiry through costing and the bill of materials to the shop-floor schedule and reporting work back. It is built in pieces, starting with the job and the costing.
01What such a system holds
The minimum that made-to-order production stands on.
- 01The job from enquiry to dispatch, with its history and documents in one place.
- 02Costing and a quote built from materials, operations and standard times.
- 03The bill of materials and material consumption, tied to stock.
- 04The shop-floor schedule — what is being made today, what is late, what is waiting on materials.
- 05Reporting work and materials from the floor, not from memory afterwards.
02Why not a ready-made ERP
A large ERP is built for serial production with fixed bills of materials. Made-to-order work, where every piece is a little different and the bill of materials comes together during preparation, does not fit it — and bending the ERP tends to cost more than a custom system for the part that is yours.
The usual result is a combination: accounting and stock in the ready-made tool, the job and the shop-floor schedule in a custom system, a connection between them.
03What pays off first
Not the shop-floor schedule, as most people expect, but costing and reporting work back. While the price is assembled in Excel from scratch every time and hours are recorded afterwards, less gets invoiced than was worked and nobody knows by how much.
Companies that start here see the difference on the first invoicing run, and then build scheduling with real data about how long each operation actually takes.
Frequently asked
- Will it replace our accounting?
- No, and it should not. The system handles the job, costing and the shop floor, and connects to accounting for invoices and stock. Accounting stays where it is.
- Can it handle made-to-order production where every piece is different?
- Yes, that is exactly what building it custom is for. The bill of materials and the costing come together during job preparation, not from a fixed product catalogue.
- How long until something runs?
- The first part — usually the job and costing — is live within a few weeks. A full system takes three to nine months depending on scope, in pieces.