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Manufacturing and Supply Chain

Planning, production, quality and logistics in one system, with costs that reflect what actually happened on the shop floor.

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Manufacturers usually arrive at Odoo with a planning spreadsheet that has become too important to touch. Bills of materials live in one place, purchase orders in another, and the true cost of a finished product is a matter of opinion. Odoo brings those threads together, but only if the master data and the routing are set up with care.

We implement Odoo for discrete manufacturers, assemblers and companies that subcontract production. The scope typically covers bills of materials, work centres and routings, manufacturing orders, material planning, purchasing, quality checks, warehouse operations and the accounting that values it all.

What we set up for manufacturers

  • Bills of materials with variants, versions and by products
  • Work centres, routings and operation times, with work orders on the shop floor
  • Master production scheduling and replenishment rules, from reorder points to make to order
  • Purchasing with supplier price lists, lead times and blanket orders
  • Subcontracting, including components supplied to the subcontractor
  • Quality control points on receipt, in production and before delivery
  • Lot and serial number tracking, with traceability reports
  • Inventory valuation and landed costs, with cost variance reporting
  • Maintenance requests and preventive maintenance schedules

Why manufacturers work with us

  • We spend time on master data before we configure anything. A wrong bill of materials is expensive in every downstream process.
  • Costing is designed with your finance team, so standard, average or FIFO valuation is chosen deliberately.
  • We keep the shop floor interface simple. Operators need to see the next operation and record what happened, nothing more.
  • Multi site and multi country production is within scope, including intercompany transfers.

The usual problem and how we work instead

The usual problem

  • The planning spreadsheet is the real system and the ERP records what happened afterwards
  • Bills of materials are incomplete, so purchasing is driven by phone calls
  • Product cost is a guess because scrap, rework and overheads are not captured
  • Quality issues are recorded on paper and never linked to lots or suppliers

How we work instead

  • Replenishment and manufacturing orders driven from demand in Odoo, with the planner reviewing exceptions rather than building the plan by hand
  • Bills of materials validated line by line with engineering before go live
  • Actual material and labour captured on work orders, with variances reported per order
  • Quality checks in the process flow, linked to lots, suppliers and work centres

A typical manufacturing project

  1. Discovery

    Product structures, production methods, planning practice, purchasing and costing approach, reviewed with production, purchasing and finance.

  2. Master data

    Products, bills of materials, routings, suppliers and locations cleaned and loaded into a test database.

  3. Process configuration

    Planning, manufacturing, purchasing, quality and warehouse flows built and tested on real orders.

  4. Go live

    Usually at a stock count, so that opening quantities and valuations are agreed on the first day of the new system.

Frequently asked questions

How long does an Odoo implementation take?

A focused first phase covering sales, invoicing or accounting, inventory and purchasing for a single company typically runs a few months from discovery to go live. Adding manufacturing, eCommerce, projects or several legal entities extends that. The largest factors are the number of processes, the state of your data and how much time your team can give the project. We give you a timeline with the roadmap and update it at every phase boundary.

Do we go live with everything at once?

Usually not. We recommend going live with the core apps first, because that is where the data flows connect, and adding further apps in later phases once the core is stable. For groups, roll out is typically entity by entity using the first as a template. A single big go live is possible when the business needs it, but it carries more risk and needs more preparation.

How much of our team’s time will the project need?

More than most people expect. A project lead needs at least two days a week. Each key user needs time for workshops, testing and training, which can add up to several days per module. We estimate these hours per role and per phase in the roadmap so that managers can plan for them.

Will you customise Odoo for us?

Where there is a clear business case, yes. Our default is to configure standard Odoo first, use existing modules second and write code last. Every customisation is documented with the reason it exists, because each one adds cost at every future upgrade.

How do you handle training?

Per module and per role, close to the point of use. Key users are trained as each module is configured and they in turn test it. End users are trained before go live with sessions, recordings and short written guides that you keep. We avoid a single large session a week before launch.

What happens after go live?

A hypercare period with daily contact for the first weeks, followed by handover to our managed service if you want ongoing support, or to your internal team with documentation and a knowledge base.

All Odoo implementation questions

Other industries

eCommerce and Retail

Odoo for online and physical retail: connected shops, accurate stock across channels, fast fulfilment and clean accounts.

Services and Consulting Firms

Project based businesses use Odoo to plan work, record time, bill accurately and see which engagements actually make money.

Enterprise and Multi Entity Groups

Larger organisations use Odoo across multiple legal entities with shared master data, intercompany automation and group reporting.

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