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Manufacturing

A plant is run by the plan not by experience alone

We implement manufacturing management systems — bills of material and routings through planning, capacity, cost, quality and inventory — sized to the plant: a small workshop starts with what stops the chaos, a mid-size plant connects planning to stock and sales, and a large one faces multiple lines, warehouses and analytical costing. All three share one thing: a decision needs a figure before it needs software.

Request a plant assessmentSee the three sizes
  • Three sizes, three scopes
  • A plain word on what does not fit your size
  • Cost computed by the system, not the spreadsheet
  • Clear boundary: business systems, not machine control
  • Durations are planning ranges, not commitments

Direct answers

The questions asked first

How do you treat a small, mid-size and large plant differently?

By fit rather than price: a small plant (one or two lines) suffers because production and cost live in one person’s head, so it starts with correct bills of material, disciplined stock and an acceptable estimated cost — while installing full capacity planning is waste. A mid-size plant (several lines, a warehouse, reps) suffers from disconnection: planning does not know stock and sales promises dates production has not confirmed, so it starts by connecting requirement and capacity planning to sales and purchasing. A large plant (multiple lines, warehouses and branches) suffers from governance: analytical cost per line and product, plan against actual, batch and quality traceability, and permission control. In the assessment we tell you which of these you are — not which one we prefer to sell.

Do you implement machine control and industrial automation?

No. Our scope is business management systems: planning, inventory, cost, quality and documents. We do not program PLCs, we do not build SCADA systems, we do not supply sensors or hardware, and we do not implement production-line control. When you need to read data from a machine we connect it only through an interface that already exists (a file or protocol the machine or its system exports), and only after inspecting it. If no interface exists we say so plainly and refer you to an automation specialist — because anyone promising to collect machine data with no interface is promising what they do not control.

Why do you publish no productivity or OEE improvement figure?

Because it is not an outcome of software: real capacity is set by machines, maintenance, skill and the regularity of raw material, not by a program. An improvement measured in one plant would not apply to yours, and publishing it would be fabrication. What we measure and present is what belongs to us: bill-of-material accuracy, stock balance correctness, work-order completeness, the gap between estimated and actual cost, and the recorded defect rate — figures read from your system and about your operation. As for OEE, where a machine genuinely exports its data we present it as it is, and we do not improve the number by redefining it.

What usually stops manufacturing projects?

Three things we see repeatedly, none of them technical: incorrect bills of material, sometimes abandoned for years, so planning is built on an error that multiplies; untrusted stock balances, which make every report suspect; and the absence of a decision owner for administrative adjustments — who approves that this item is produced from this bill, and who accepts that a warehouse balance must be corrected. That is why we start with the count, the bills of material and a written assignment of responsibilities, before any promise about a date or a report.

Sizes

Three sizes — and three different scopes

The same sector does not mean the same project. Read your size first, then what fits you — and, plainly, what does not.

Small plant

One or two lines · a workshop or single warehouse · run directly by the owner

What it suffers from
All the knowledge sits in one head: bills of material are unwritten, cost is estimated by experience, material is bought on instinct, and the owner’s absence for two days stalls the work.
What fits it
Written bills of material and disciplined stock, an estimated cost computed by the system instead of guessed, simple work orders recording output and waste, and simple reports the owner reads on a phone.

What does not fit you: Full capacity planning, multi-level analytical costing and complex batch tracking: each adds an entry burden a small team cannot carry, and gets abandoned after months so everything returns to spreadsheets.

Mid-size plant

Several lines · one or more warehouses · sales and reps · dozens of users

What it suffers from
Disconnected systems: planning cannot see stock, sales promises dates production has not confirmed, purchasing reacts after material runs out, and cost is assembled at month-end by hand across files.
What fits it
Connecting requirement and capacity planning to stock, sales and purchasing; routings with stages and time per stage; actual production cost from system documents; and plan-versus-actual variance reports per line.

What does not fit you: Trying to go live with everything at once, patching the system core instead of using the standard extension path, and loading complex quality tracking before bills of material and balances are stable.

Large plant

Multiple lines and warehouses · branches or companies · hundreds of users · periodic audit

What it suffers from
Judgement rather than data: cost per line and product is unreadable, variances surface late, batch and quality traceability is undocumented at audit, permissions are broader than needed, and each company runs on different rules.
What fits it
Analytical cost per line, product and cost centre; plan-versus-actual at line and shift level; documented batch traceability and quality control; role-based permissions with a change log; and multi-company operation in one database with separated data and inter-company accounting.

What does not fit you: Starting with executive dashboards before bills and balances are corrected, relying on manual inter-company exports, and running without a change log while expecting a clean audit outcome.

The size bands here are indicative guidance rather than an official classification, and the criterion is operational complexity: number of lines, number of warehouses, product variety, and whether branches or companies exist. A small plant with many items can be more complex than a larger one with few.

Symptoms

What usually shows up in plants

Eight recurring symptoms, each with a different root cause — which is why the treatment differs even when the complaint sounds the same.

Bills of material in an old file

The bill lives with an engineer rather than in the system, and every product change never reaches planning, so planning runs on an old version.

Cause: no single source

A balance nobody trusts

Stock is adjusted by hand without a document, differences appear at count time, and the planner loses trust and measures by eye.

Cause: adjustments without documents

A delivery promise that does not hold

Sales promises on theoretical capacity, the shortfall appears during execution, and the date is revised after the customer has planned around it.

Cause: undeclared capacity

Cost known after the sale

Unit cost is assembled at month-end, so loss-making products are discovered after being sold at prices that do not cover them.

Cause: late costing

Waste and rework with no figure

Everyone says there is waste and rework, but no record shows where, on which item and on which line — so the complaint is treated, not the cause.

Cause: defects not recorded

Sudden downtime that disrupts the plan

Maintenance is reactive, so a line stops with no fault history showing how often it recurs or how it affects the schedule.

Cause: maintenance without a log

Buying on instinct and repeated stockouts

Material is bought when it runs out rather than when it is needed, so stock swells in some items and others vanish unexpectedly.

Cause: no reorder point

An audit asking for a trace that is missing

A request to show who produced the batch, from which material and with which check, answered by scattered files that prove nothing.

Cause: undocumented traceability

Components

What we implement in the plant

Eight components built in order according to your size; we do not implement all of them for a plant that does not need them all.

Bills of material and routings

Each product’s components, quantities and units, plus the operation stages, time per stage and work centre — the base everything else is built on.

The base

Raw material and finished-goods stock

Storage locations, units and transfers, counting through system documents, and a reorder point for every critical item.

The trusted balance

Requirement and capacity planning

What to buy and make, and when, computed from demand, stock and lead times, with each work centre’s load so a bottleneck appears before it hits.

Bottlenecks before they hit

Work orders and production recording

Orders tied to demand, recording output, consumption, waste and rework, and closing an order with a known variance rather than an estimate.

Plan against actual

Actual and analytical costing

Unit cost from material, labour and overhead, compared with estimated cost, and variance analysis per product and line.

Which product earns?

Quality and inspection of receipt and output

Inspection points on receipt and at production, defects recorded with their causes, and accept, reject and rework decisions documented.

Defects with causes, not counts

Batch traceability and the audit record

Which material the batch came from and which customer received it, who produced it and when, with a change log and permissions that evidence what happened.

An evidential trace

Management reporting and variances

A console for what a manager actually reads: output against plan, bottlenecks, cost, quality, and slow-moving or late stock.

A decision, not an archive

Method

The method: from the count to operation

Eight stages, each with a published output, starting with the count and the bills of material rather than with configuration — because planning on wrong data multiplies the error.

  1. 01

    Assessment and size

    A visit covering lines, warehouses and items, establishing the real operating size, what runs on spreadsheets today, and where the largest risk sits.

    Output: an assessment naming your size
  2. 02

    Counting and correcting balances

    A physical count through system documents with documented correction of differences, because planning on a wrong balance multiplies the error.

    Output: a trusted, documented balance
  3. 03

    Bills and routings

    Writing bills of material, routings, work centres and their times, and approving them formally by the engineering decision owner.

    Output: approved bills
  4. 04

    Configuration and testing

    Configuring the system on your actual operations and running a full cycle on real data before go-live — from demand to closing the order.

    Output: one complete tested cycle
  5. 05

    Training on the process, not the screen

    Training each role on its own process: what to enter and when, what to do on an error, and who approves an adjustment — with illustrated guides left with you.

    Output: a guide per role
  6. 06

    Phased go-live

    Going live on a limited scope first — one line or product family — then expanding, rather than switching the whole plant on in one day.

    Output: one line running, then expansion
  7. 07

    Reconciliation and close

    Reconciling stock balances with accounting, closing a first full period in the system, and documenting any difference and its cause.

    Output: a documented close with its differences
  8. 08

    Periodic improvement

    A periodic review of the numbers: where the recurring variance is, which bill needs correcting, and which report nobody reads and should be dropped rather than kept.

    Output: a periodic improvement report

The durations shown are planning ranges to help you build your schedule, not contractual commitments: the actual duration depends on the readiness of your data and how quickly your team approves adjustments.

Measurement

What we measure in a manufacturing project

Indicators about data and the system rather than about machines — because machines are not in our scope.

Bill-of-material accuracy

The share of bills that matched actual consumption when work orders closed, because a wrong bill corrupts planning and cost together.

Stock balance correctness

The gap between the physical count and the system balance, because every report after it rests on that figure.

Work-order completeness

The share of orders closed with recorded consumption and output, against orders left open and distorting every later report.

Estimated against actual cost variance

The size and direction of the variance per product — the indicator that exposes a loss-making product before it is sold rather than after.

Defects recorded with causes

The share of defects recorded with a specific cause rather than a bare number, because an unknown cause cannot be treated.

We announce no productivity improvement percentage, no OEE and no savings: capacity is set by machines, maintenance, skill and raw-material regularity, and the commercial result is shaped by the market and pricing. What we measure is what belongs to our work: bill accuracy, balance correctness, order completeness, cost variance and the recorded defect rate.

Integration

Where the system lives in your plant

A plant is not one system: we connect what you have instead of forcing its replacement, and we inspect every interface before promising it.

Odoo sales and purchasing

Demand flowing from sales order to manufacturing order to purchase, on the same stock and the same documents.

The primary integration

Accounting and cost centres

Posting material, labour and overhead consumption to the right accounts, and reconciling stock with accounting.

Reconciliation is published

Quality and inspections

Inspection points on receipt and at production, with results and accept, reject and rework decisions recorded.

A documented decision

Warehouses and branches

Multiple storage locations with documented internal transfers, and branches or companies on one database with separated data.

Documented movement

A machine interface — if one exists

Connecting only through an interface that already exists (a file or protocol the machine or its system exports), after inspecting it; we do not program PLCs or SCADA.

An explicit boundary

Boundaries

Where our scope stops — written before you ask

Saying what we do not do saves you more time than saying what we do, especially in a sector that conflates management systems with control systems.

Machine control, PLC and SCADA programming

We do not program controllers, build SCADA systems or intervene in machine operating logic — that belongs to automation engineering.

Supplying devices and sensors

We supply no sensors, measurement equipment or industrial network devices, and we do not install or calibrate them.

Collecting machine data with no interface

If no interface exports the machine’s data, we promise no collection; we refer an automation specialist to build the interface first.

Quality certificates and accreditations

We grant no ISO certificates, certify no conformity and represent no audit body. We implement a system that produces a record useful at audit.

When what is needed falls outside our scope we say so in the assessment and refer a specialist instead of accepting it and learning at your plant’s expense. That is written in the contract, not left to courtesy.

FAQ

Questions specific to plants

Direct answers on sizes, scope, responsibilities and what we do not guarantee.

How do you treat a small, mid-size and large plant differently?

By fit rather than price: a small plant (one or two lines) suffers because production and cost live in one person’s head, so it starts with correct bills of material, disciplined stock and an acceptable estimated cost — while installing full capacity planning is waste. A mid-size plant (several lines, a warehouse, reps) suffers from disconnection: planning does not know stock and sales promises dates production has not confirmed, so it starts by connecting requirement and capacity planning to sales and purchasing. A large plant (multiple lines, warehouses and branches) suffers from governance: analytical cost per line and product, plan against actual, batch and quality traceability, and permission control. In the assessment we tell you which of these you are — not which one we prefer to sell.

Do you implement machine control and industrial automation?

No. Our scope is business management systems: planning, inventory, cost, quality and documents. We do not program PLCs, we do not build SCADA systems, we do not supply sensors or hardware, and we do not implement production-line control. When you need to read data from a machine we connect it only through an interface that already exists (a file or protocol the machine or its system exports), and only after inspecting it. If no interface exists we say so plainly and refer you to an automation specialist — because anyone promising to collect machine data with no interface is promising what they do not control.

Why do you publish no productivity or OEE improvement figure?

Because it is not an outcome of software: real capacity is set by machines, maintenance, skill and the regularity of raw material, not by a program. An improvement measured in one plant would not apply to yours, and publishing it would be fabrication. What we measure and present is what belongs to us: bill-of-material accuracy, stock balance correctness, work-order completeness, the gap between estimated and actual cost, and the recorded defect rate — figures read from your system and about your operation. As for OEE, where a machine genuinely exports its data we present it as it is, and we do not improve the number by redefining it.

What usually stops manufacturing projects?

Three things we see repeatedly, none of them technical: incorrect bills of material, sometimes abandoned for years, so planning is built on an error that multiplies; untrusted stock balances, which make every report suspect; and the absence of a decision owner for administrative adjustments — who approves that this item is produced from this bill, and who accepts that a warehouse balance must be corrected. That is why we start with the count, the bills of material and a written assignment of responsibilities, before any promise about a date or a report.

Does a small plant need a full system?

No, and the sound decision is to start with what stops the chaos: written bills of material, disciplined stock with documents, an estimated cost computed by the system, and simple work orders. Full capacity planning and multi-level analytical costing add an entry burden a small team cannot carry and are abandoned after months. We say so at assessment stage even when it means a smaller scope for us: an abandoned project is worse than a small successful one.

How long does a plant system take to implement?

We present durations as planning ranges rather than commitments, because the decisive factor is not configuration but the readiness of your data: bills of material, how fast counting and balance correction proceed, and how fast your team approves adjustments. So we schedule stages against published outputs (a trusted balance, approved bills, one complete tested cycle) instead of a single delivery date, and we switch on one line first before expanding.

What is out of scope?

Industrial automation, PLC programming and SCADA systems, supplying and installing sensors, devices and industrial hardware, quality certificates and accreditations, mechanical and electrical machine maintenance, running the plant on your behalf, system and cloud licences (contracted in your name), and specialised industrial engineering consulting. We say all of this at assessment stage, before the contract.

Which size is your plant?

Tell us your lines, warehouses and product variety, and what is run on spreadsheets today, and we will come back with an assessment that names your size, the fitting scope — and what does not fit you.

  • An assessment that names your size
  • A written scope before any commitment
  • A plain statement of what is outside our scope
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Related topics

We are a systems implementation and integration company, not an industrial automation provider: we do not program PLCs or SCADA, we do not supply sensors or hardware, and we guarantee no productivity improvement, OEE gain or saving. Cost and operational results depend on machines, maintenance, skill, the regularity of raw material and management, not on the system alone. Durations are shown as planning ranges rather than commitments, and the scope of work is written into the contract.