Industries - Manufacturing
Know what the job actually cost while you can still do something about it.
Manufacturing ERP only works when the operating model underneath it does. Australian manufacturers rarely have a software problem in isolation - bills of materials held informally, stock nobody trusts, production recorded on paper. We start with the operating model, then use ERP, manufacturing CRM and workflow automation to make production planning, inventory, procurement and job costing reliable.
At a glance
- Typical profile
- Make-to-order and mixed-mode manufacturers with recurring product families and real inventory.
- Most common constraint
- Job cost only visible after invoicing, and stock accuracy nobody plans from.
- Where we usually start
- BOM ownership, inventory accuracy and supplier invoice matching.
Operating model
Where information moves - and where it stops.
Every manufacturer we work with breaks in one of these seven joins. Naming the join is the first useful step.
Seven connected stages from quote to margin. Production exceptions route to a person, and actual cost and stock accuracy feed back into planning and the next quote.
- 01
Demand and quoting
CRM / estimating · Quote
Enquiries estimated from material, labour and overhead assumptions that often live in one estimator's spreadsheet.
- 02
Planning
Planning · Production plan
Orders converted into production requirements, constrained by material lead time and work centre capacity.
- 03
Procurement
Purchasing · Purchase order
Raw material and components purchased against forecast and firm demand, with supplier lead time driving the schedule.
- 04
Production
Shop floor · Work order
Work orders issued, materials consumed, operations completed, scrap and rework recorded - or not recorded.
- 05
Quality and traceability
Quality · Inspection record
Inspection points, non-conformances and lot or serial history that must be retrievable years later.
- 06
Despatch and invoicing
Warehouse / finance · Finished good, invoice
Goods picked, packed, shipped and billed, with delivery evidence tied to the order.
- 07
Costing and margin
Finance · Job cost
Actual cost compared to the quoted assumption - the single number most manufacturers cannot produce reliably.
Production exception
Shortage, scrap, rework or a mid-job variation stops the automatic path. A supervisor decides whether to substitute, reschedule or re-cost, and that decision is recorded against the job rather than absorbed on the floor.
Actual material, labour and stock movement return to planning and quoting so the next estimate is built on what jobs really cost, not the original assumption.
Systems landscape
What the estate usually looks like on arrival.
Not a criticism - this is what growth without an architecture produces.
Accounting software carrying more than it should
Xero or MYOB running as the de facto system of record, with stock and job costing bolted on through spreadsheets that only one person maintains.
Estimating in spreadsheets
Quoting models with embedded rates and margin rules, disconnected from the actual costs recorded against completed jobs.
Production tracked on paper
Job cards, run sheets and whiteboards on the floor, keyed into the office system days later, if at all.
A CRM that never took
Purchased for the sales team, populated for a quarter, then abandoned because quoting still happens outside it.
Disconnected shop-floor equipment
Machines and test gear producing data nobody captures, while operators re-record the same numbers by hand.
Constraints
Five bottlenecks that cost real margin.
01Job cost known only after invoicing
By the time the numbers are assembled, the job is closed, the estimator has moved on and the lesson is not applied to the next quote.
02Stock accuracy that nobody trusts
Once planners stop believing the on-hand figure, they buy defensively and hold buffer stock. Working capital absorbs the cost of the data problem.
03Bills of materials held informally
When the real build sits in an experienced person's head, every planning, costing and purchasing decision downstream is an approximation.
04Quote-to-order rekeying
Quotes rebuilt as orders, orders rebuilt as work orders, work orders rebuilt as invoices - each hop an opportunity for a margin error.
05Certificates and compliance chased manually
Test certificates, material certs and customer documentation packs assembled by hand at despatch, delaying invoicing.
The constraint
Manufacturing ERP works when production planning, stock, purchasing and job costing share one picture.
We start with the operating model, then choose platforms against it. If the model does not need a capability, we do not licence it.
Automation
High-value automation for a manufacturing back office.
Ranked by how quickly the effect is measurable against a baseline you already have.
| Opportunity | What changes |
|---|---|
| Supplier invoice and PO matching | Extract invoice detail, match to purchase order and receipt, route only exceptions to a person. Usually the fastest measurable win in a manufacturing back office. |
| Work order confirmation at the machine | Barcode or tablet capture of start, finish, quantity and scrap, removing the paper-to-keyboard delay and making costing live. |
| Quote generation from a costed model | Structured estimating that reuses real material pricing and historical labour, producing consistent quotes without spreadsheet cloning. |
| Despatch documentation packs | Assemble delivery docket, certificates and compliance documents automatically at pick confirmation, so invoicing is not delayed. |
| Replenishment triggers | Reorder rules against real consumption rather than memory, with exceptions surfaced to the buyer instead of a weekly spreadsheet review. |
| Customer order acknowledgement | Automatic confirmation with promised dates drawn from actual capacity and material availability. |
Architecture
Who owns what between CRM and ERP.
Most duplication problems in manufacturing come from never deciding this explicitly.
ERP should own
Operational truth
- Products, BOMs, routings and work centres
- Inventory quantity, location and valuation
- Purchase orders, receipts and supplier invoices
- Work orders, consumption and production cost
- Financial ledger and job profitability
CRM should own
Commercial relationship
- Accounts, contacts and opportunity pipeline
- Enquiry qualification and quote status
- Customer-specific pricing agreements
- Service, complaints and warranty conversations
- Forecast demand fed into planning
Practical AI
Where AI earns its place on the shop floor and in the office.
Bounded tasks with a measurable baseline and a cheap error. Nothing here removes an engineering or safety judgement.
Document extraction across the supply chain
Supplier invoices, order confirmations, certificates and customer purchase orders read and posted with a review queue for anything below confidence.
Quote support from historical outcomes
Summarising how comparable jobs actually costed, so the estimator sees prior variance before committing a price.
Anomaly detection in production data
Flagging jobs consuming materially more material or labour than the standard, while the job is still open and recoverable.
Technical enquiry triage
Classifying inbound enquiries by product family and drawing together specifications and prior orders before an engineer picks it up.
Platform roles
What we typically recommend, and why.
Platform selection follows the architecture. If the operating model does not need a capability, we do not licence it.
Odoo as the operational core
Where inventory, BOMs, work orders and costing must share one data set, Odoo covers manufacturing and finance in a single system with a manageable configuration effort.
Zoho for the commercial layer
Where the sales, service and quoting relationship needs structure but ERP-grade production is not required in the same tool, Zoho CRM sits in front of the operational system.
Integration between them
Most manufacturers end up with two or three systems. The value is in defining who owns each data object and making the joins reliable rather than consolidating for its own sake.
Implementation
Four things that decide whether it sticks.
01Nothing works without accurate BOMs
Documenting and assigning ownership of bills of materials is the real precondition. It is also the task most often underestimated in the plan.
02Floor capture must suit the floor
Interfaces used in gloves, near noise and under time pressure need to be simpler than office screens. If capture is awkward, it stops within a fortnight.
03Cut over against a stocktake
Go-live sequenced to a physical count and a period boundary is the difference between a clean opening position and months of unreliable valuation.
04Supervisors decide adoption
Leading hands and supervisors either reinforce capture or quietly permit the old paper flow. They need involvement during design, not a briefing at go-live.
Manufacturing systems questions we are asked most
- What is manufacturing ERP?
- Manufacturing ERP is a single operational system that holds products, bills of materials, inventory, purchasing, work orders and finance in one data set, so production planning and job costing draw on the same records as the ledger. In practice the label matters less than which system owns each data object, and whether shop-floor capture is reliable enough to trust the numbers it produces.
- Do we need full MRP, or is inventory and finance enough?
- It depends on whether production scheduling and true production cost are decision-critical. Many smaller manufacturers get most of the benefit from accurate inventory, purchasing and job costing first, then add routings and scheduling once capture is habitual. Turning on MRP before BOM and stock data is trustworthy usually produces plans nobody follows.
- Can we keep Xero or MYOB and add an ERP for operations?
- It is possible, and sometimes sensible in the short term, but it creates a permanent reconciliation obligation between inventory valuation, cost of goods sold and the ledger. We work through whether the integration cost and month-end effort are lower than moving finance into the operational system.
- How do we get job costing right when jobs change mid-production?
- Variations need to be captured as they happen, against the job, by the person who authorises them. That is a process design decision before it is a system one. The system's role is to make recording a variation faster than not recording it.
- How long does a manufacturing ERP implementation take?
- It is driven by scope and data readiness rather than the software. Core finance, inventory and purchasing is a materially shorter exercise than adding manufacturing, quality and scheduling in the same phase. We scope phases against your data condition and available internal time, not against a standard calendar.
- What happens to our historical job and production data?
- Usually a decision to archive rather than migrate. Open jobs, current stock, active products and opening balances move; historic production records are retained in an accessible archive. Loading years of closed job history into a live system rarely repays its cost.
Where to go next
Start with the number you cannot currently produce.
Usually that is job cost, or stock you would plan from. We will trace it back to the process and data that would have to change.